The Future of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia
These quotes hint that the future of any specialty lies in adaptation to change. Cardiothoracic anesthesiologists will certainly experience, and preferably effect, change in the health care system in the coming years. The specialty will simultaneously be presented with continuing changes in scientific knowledge, patient comorbidity burden, and novel surgical procedures that will challenge these practitioners to operate within an ever-expanding team of perioperative clinicians. The practice of cardiothoracic anesthesia will continue to evolve in parallel with those changes in technology, patient selection, and advanced procedures, and will also be affected by changes in standards of training, certification, and health care policy. Cardiovascular anesthesiologists already recognize that they have an important role in caring for the increasingly complex patients who will present in the future; it is one of the things that is most appealing about the specialty. It is the evolving complexity of perioperative management that will emphasize the importance of the practitioner’s development of effective communication and systems-based practice and of maintaining their place at the table where health care policy decisions are made.