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Introduction

Inpatient pain services (IPS) consist of a multidisciplinary team including appropriately trained acute pain physicians and anaesthetists along with nurses specialised in pain management. Other allied health professionals such as applied psychologists, addiction medicine specialists, physiotherapists and pharmacists may also be part of the IPS team.

After the publication of the joint working party of the Royal College of...

Introduction

Head and neck surgery includes a wide spectrum of surgical interventions, ranging from short daycase procedures to long and complex operations.¹ The requirements for providing anaesthesia services for routine head and neck surgery, such as tonsillectomy, will be different to those required to provide anaesthesia for major or complex surgery. There should be recognition that routine head...

Introduction

Vascular  services are recognised as having a high priority in the UK. Publication of evidence that the outcome from abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) surgery was significantly worse in the UK than in comparable countries,¹ and the 2005 NCEPOD Report ‘AAA a service in need of surgery’, led to a national Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Quality Improvement Programme (AAAQIP)...

Introduction

Cardiothoracic anaesthesia services are provided for patients undergoing cardiac and thoracic procedures. To reflect current practice, these guidelines have been more clearly divided to identify areas of differing requirement. Anaesthetists in cardiac surgical services are now more frequently required to provide anaesthesia for invasive cardiology procedures.

Cardiac surgery

Cardiac surgery may involve adult, paediatric and neonatal patients and includes...