Vol. XIII, No. 5Archive > May, 2012

Anesthesia Alert

Dealing With the Anesthesia Drug Shortages

Mark McGraw, Associate Editor

If the ongoing shortage of anesthesia drugs required to perform many surgeries has forced your anesthesia providers to modify their normal practices or use alternative agents to accommodate their needs, they're hardly alone. In a recent American Society of Anesthesiologists survey, 97.6% of respondents reported they were low on at least 1 drug, with 96% indicating that shortages had forced them to use substitutes for certain patients and procedures. The drugs respondents most often specified as being the toughest to obtain included fentanyl (66.3%), thiopental (40.3%), succinylcholine (21.2%) and propofol (19.2%).

 
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