Susan A. Vassallo

Venous air embolism and cervical microdiscectomy

V enous air embolism (VAE) is a potential complication of all surgical procedures in which the operative field is vertically superior to the level of the heart. Although VAE may occur in a variety of surgical positions, this phenomenon is most associated with the sitting position (1). The incidence of Doppler-detected VAE is as high as 45% in sitting craniectomy patients and 24% in sitting cervical surgeries. Losasso et al. (2) report Doppler-detected VAE in 7% of patients undergoing cervical spine surgery. Matjasko et al. (3) note an incidence of Dopplerdetected VAE of 8.2% (18/220 patients) during cervical foraminotomy. Cervical microdiscectomy is one type of cervical spine surgery which may or may not be performed using the sitting position and which requires a smaller incision (2 cm) than is used for cervical laminectomy. Because our experience with the microdiscectomy procedure in the sitting position suggested an incidence of Doppler-detected VAE of less than the 7% previously reported (21, we retrospectively examined 121 consecutive cervical microdiscectomies performed in the sitting position.

Plasma cholinesterase activity and dibucaine number in infants and children

Summary

From Park Ridge to Schaumburg to the World Wide Web: the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.

1135 December 2014 T HE world’s largest library, museum, and archives devoted to the history of anesthesia are housed within the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (WLM), in suburban Chicago. Less than 6 months after WLM Founder Paul Meyer Wood, M.D., had succumbed to a heart attack, his namesake Library-Museum opened formally in November of 1963. The WLM was a library-over-museum two-story building annexed to the one-story American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Building at 515 Busse Highway, Park Ridge, Illinois. In August of 1992, the WLM moved with its ASA “mother ship” into a three-story building in the backyard of the same extended lot in Park Ridge, at 520 North Northwest Highway. Twenty-two years later, in August of 2014, the new WLM has opened formally just 12 miles away, in Schaumburg, Illinois—for the first time on a plot of land never seen by WLM Founder Paul Wood. The previous two Park Ridge buildings had basements for storage of undisplayed library-museum items. Galleries in these buildings were designed when economy was paramount, so exhibits were designed to display the maximum number of objects in the most inexpensive manner. The more objects and machines displayed, the less the WLM, and therefore ASA members, would have to pay in climatecontrolled off-site storage. Designed by a physician-curator (G.S.B.), these galleries were somewhat cluttered. Professional signage was generated piecemeal with the assistance of a single graphics artist. In January of 2012, then WLM President Mary Ellen Warner, M.D., convened a special “Future Space Planning Meeting” of the WLM Trustees in Chicago. With ASA Past President Eugene Sinclair, M.D., as moderator, the WLM Board unanimously agreed to pledge

A single-blind study of combined pulse oximetry and capnography in children.

2 million to ensure the WLM significant space in the new ASA Headquarters Building to be built in Schaumburg. The WLM Trustees thereby underscored the importance of displaying the history of our specialty prominently inside our specialty’s society headquarters building. This meeting and decision were critical to the rest of the planning and design process to what is now our new WLM space at 1061 American Lane, Schaumburg, Illinois. Because the new ASA Building is a “slab build,” there is no basement area for onsite WLM storage. So, moving to the new ASA Building meant that the WLM had to locate and maintain a large climate-controlled storage annex in Schaumburg. The WLM’s in-house project manager was WLM Director Karen R. Bieterman, M.L.I.S. By October of 2012, the authors had joined three WLM Trustees, Charles C. Tandy, M.D., Selma H. Calmes, M.D., and John B. Neeld, Jr., M.D. to “develop a plan for the successful move of the museum, library and rare books to the new ASA Headquarter space.” An ASA Past President, Dr. Neeld was also a member of the ASA Headquarters Building Construction Committee. Later that month, Director Bieterman, WLM Vice President Mark E. Schroeder, M.D., and WLM Museum Committee Chair William L. McNiece, M.D., visited a Louisville, Kentucky, From Park Ridge to Schaumburg to the World Wide Web