VOLUME 36, ISSUE 1

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a great start to a brand-new year. This being a leap year, we will have one extra day to accomplish great things this year. There has been a lot of activity surrounding the Texas Society of Anesthesiologists Newsletter. Once again, we have some great contributions from our members, and I hope that you will take the time to read them. As always, we welcome contributions from our TSA membership who wish to provide clinical or pharmacologic updates, news of events, educational offerings, items of historical importance, advocacy news, or even artistic contributions such as poetry, artwork, or photography. This newsletter is fueled by volunteers who wish to share with the membership and the more who contribute, the better the product will be.

I am happy to present the culmination of the hard work of many people in this edition of the TSA Newsletter. I believe that everyone will find something of interest in this wide array of offerings for this edition. Carrying on the series that we began a few years back, Dr. Robert A. Miller (of the Miller laryngoscopy blade) is the feature for this edition’s “On the Shoulders of Giants: Legends of Texas Anesthesiology” series. This series continues to bring me a great deal of joy and I would like to thank Dr. Amy Woods and the rest of the history committee of the TSA for their continued support of this series. We have others already in line for the feature, but we are always interested in hearing from our membership if you have strong feelings about additional persons that should be featured in this series.

We also have a couple of educational offerings of interest. Please note the new University of Texas Health Houston Master of Science in Anesthesia that emerges as the first Texas based program to train anesthesiologist assistants. While other programs have existed that trained anesthesiologist assistants in Texas, this is the first one that is academically based in Texas. There is hope that this will help address the nationwide shortage of anesthesia personnel that we are all facing nationwide. Additionally, we present an update on the residency match program. If you have not actively engaged in the residency education process in the past couple of years, some of the changes presented may come as a surprise. The article also gives updates on the statistics surrounding the competitiveness of our specialty overall among medical students. Finally, we present an update on a pediatric anesthesiology fellow bootcamp at the UT Health Houston program that has emerged and is providing a great service to trainees around the state.

This edition also delves into some clinical issues. First, we have another report of outstanding medical mission work being done by Texas anesthesiologists. This report is from a group Baylor College of Medicine-Houston faculty and residents who traveled to the Dominican Republic to provide both clinical care as well as education in ultrasound guided regional anesthesia and point of care ultrasound. Additionally, we have a report on intrathecal opioid-induced hypothermia for your consideration. Lastly, we have an update on the importance of recognizing patients with extreme low weight and muscle mass who are at increased risk of local anesthetic systemic toxicity.

Rounding out the issue, we have two articles related to obstetric anesthesia. First, we have brief update on the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Statement on Pain During Cesarean Delivery that was approved at the most recent house of delegates meeting. Additionally, we have a useful article stating the importance of advocacy for our specialty to be represented on the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee.

Overall, this is an issue of the TSA Newsletter in which, I believe, everyone will find something of interest. My thanks to everyone who has stepped up to contribute to making this edition happen.