Anesthesiologists, almost one in two patients believe they are not college graduates

Almost one patient out of two (45.6%) waiting for surgery thinks that the anesthetist-resuscitator is a graduate and not a graduate in Medicine and with a specialization. Only 22% know that he has a degree in Medicine and only 11.5% know that he works in intensive care and in emergency. This is what emerges from a research conducted and conceived by Fausto D’Agostino, anesthetist and resuscitator medical director of the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, under the supervision of professors Felice Eugenio Agrò and Paolo Pelosi, published in the ‘Journal of Anesthesia & Clinical Research’. The survey was conducted from 10 January to 31 May 2021 on a sample of 1,400 patients waiting to be operated on, through a questionnaire of 13 closed-ended questions which included, among other things, personal data, age, gender and level of education .

The answers

The answers of the patients to the questionnaire, mainly women (49.9%) and a higher percentage from 50 to 74 years of age, revealed that the subject of anesthesia certainly arouses generalized interest, but that patients about to undergo anesthesia still prefer to get more information through direct or family experience, rather than asking the doctor directly, reports the study to which the doctors and researchers Davide Sammartini, Emanuele Sammartini, Angela Sinagoga, Jessica Poloni, Pierfrancesco Fusco, Silvia Angeletti contributed. Silvia Fabris and Claudio Ferri.

The need to be informed

Respondents would like more information on some fundamental aspects of anesthesia and the diagnostic/therapeutic pathway, mainly the duration of the operation (57%), how doctors will deal with postoperative pain (47%), the different anesthesia techniques available ( 42%), in addition to any anesthesia and complications (50%). According to D’Agostino, “greater efforts should be made to improve and make more effective ways of communicating between anesthesiologists, patients and families”.

Often only the surgeon is chosen

If a family often chooses the surgeon who will have to operate on their loved one – emerges from the study – the same does not happen for the choice of the anesthetist-resuscitator, rarely perceived as a central and highly specialized figure in the operating process. It should also be remembered that the same specialist is in charge of pain therapies – a role of which only 11.5% of the interviewees are aware – so important for alleviating a patient’s suffering – and that also for this reason should deserve the maximum consideration in the phase of choice by the patient and his family.