The AUA 2018 Annual Meeting—co-hosted by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and The University of Chicago Medicine—in Chicago, Illinois, will soon commence. Education Advisory Board (EAB), Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), and the Host Institution Chairs, Drs. Robert R. Gaiser, Y.S. Prakash, Jeffrey L. Apfelbaum, and Charles W. Hogue, have organized a thought-provoking program addressing the latest breakthroughs and trends in academic anesthesia and the practice as a whole.

President Donald Trump officially declared U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While this declaration, not unexpectedly provoked polarized reactions, some of which debate the mere existence of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish state, the facts with respect to medical practice, service and education indeed reflect a unified city of Jerusalem.

Right around January 1, as I’m making the impossibly long list of New Year’s resolutions, I’ll take the opportunity to reflect, as I always do at this time of the year, upon how satisfying and varying this career has been.

I first became aware of the AUA in the spring of 1962. I was invited to give a presentation on a research project that I had just completed on the effect of anesthetics on the apneic threshold. The meeting was co-sponsored by Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, and held one day at each institution. My sponsor was John Severinghaus, a member of AUA.

The AUA 2018 Annual Meeting—co-hosted by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and The University of Chicago Medicine—in Chicago, Illinois, begins on April 26, 2018. The Education Advisory Board (EAB), Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), and the Host Institution Chairs, Drs. Robert R. Gaiser, Y.S. Prakash, Jeffrey L. Apfelbaum, and Charles W. Hogue, have organized a thought-provoking program addressing the latest breakthroughs and trends in academic anesthesia and the practice as a whole.

The attendees of the IARS, AUA and SOCCA Annual Meetings will have the opportunity to take advantage of a special Aligned Meeting and SOCCA Focus on Critical Care Day on Saturday, April 28. The thought leaders in academic anesthesiology will present a wide selection of robust education sessions highlighting pioneering topics in anesthesia and celebrating advances in education, science, research and the art of anesthesiology.

Towards the end of last year, a consortium of academic anesthesiology organizations launched an initiative to help establish a clinical trials network in the U.S., which would focus on perioperative medicine, critical care, pain management, and peri- and post-partum care.

Opioid tolerance (OT) and opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH) are commonly associated with opioid therapy to treat acute, chronic, and cancer pain. Opioid overdose and deaths are directly related to the development of OT, which is a physiological response to repeated exposure to opioids and requires escalating dose to achieve the desired analgesic effects. In contrast to analgesic tolerance, tolerance to the side effects of opioid therapy such as respiratory depression and constipation does not readily develop.

The topic of physician burnout has received increasing national attention over the last decade. A 2008 study of medical students at 7 U.S. medical schools revealed that approximately 50% of medical students experience burnout and 10% experience suicidal ideation during medical school. The first large-scale, multi-specialty study of burnout in U.S. physicians was conducted in 2011.

The AUA call for member nominations is now open. We have a new online nomination form and nominations are only accepted online. Please submit candidates by April 15.

We are concerned deeply by a report that staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were instructed not to use certain words in budget documents. As leaders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we are especially stunned that “evidence-based” and “science-based” are reportedly among the barred terms.

A Neuroscience Symposium entitled “Effects of Anesthetics on the Brain” and sponsored by the Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care (SNACC) will be held on Sunday, April 29, 2018 from 3:00 – 8:00 PM at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, 301 E. North Water Street in Chicago, Illinois. There will be no cost to participants either for registration or food/beverages.

Dr. Ronald F. Albrecht, Emeritus Professor and former Head of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, passed away on August 31, 2017.

On October 19, 2017, our specialty lost a research giant, Dr. Richard “Dick” J. Traystman.  Dick was an important contributor to the foundation of knowledge for Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and served as a mentor and friend to many in our specialty. In fact, during his career he served as a mentor to more than 100 individuals, many of whom have gone on to become leaders throughout medicine and science—in the U.S. and around the world.

If you have an idea for an article, an announcement, or an opinion on a recently published article, please submit your proposal/article to Dr. Lisa Wise-Faberowski, MD, lwf1212@stanford.edu before Friday, April 13, 2018. If your article is selected for the Spring Issue of Update 2018, we will contact you for editing and formatting!