When we talk about anesthesia we don’t mean simply the assistance given to the patient in the period preceding an operation, but to have a global and multidisciplinary vision and approach in which the research goes hand in hand with the clinic, theory and practice, united for better and better results.
“There has been an evolution with regard to anesthesia and more generally intensive care”, explained Professor Maurizio Cecconi, Director of the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care in Humanitas, Professor at Humanitas University, recently elected President for the two-year period 2020-2021 of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), the European Society of Intensive Care. “We understood that it is not only important what we do during the operation, it is a ‘holistic’ approach what we have towards the patient and it is multidisciplinary, involving surgeons, nurses, general practitioners, physiotherapists and all the staff involved to try to prepare patients to the best,” added the anesthesiologist during an interview on Tv2000.
“My vision of medicine combines clinical research with great potential: those who engage in research also achieve better clinical results,” explained Professor Cecconi. “In particular, in the field of anesthesia, the research should focus efforts on the more precise identification of patients at risk to individualize the perioperative pathways, both for routine cases and even more so for the most critical ones; the anesthetist, in addition to the technical success of the intervention, will also have the look and the attention on the importance of the subsequent recovery of the quality of life of the patient”.
Customized protocols, tailored to the patient
The work and comparison between the anesthesia and the patient begins long before the operation, which through the help of a multidisciplinary team prepares the patient, trying to change some of his habits of life that could involve risk factors.
“The objective of my research – said Cecconi – is to arrive at specific and targeted treatment protocols for the critical patient and the patient at high surgical risk, i.e. to achieve for each of these patients a balance, a stability of parameters such as blood pressure, the transport of oxygen to the tissues, the functionality of the heart both during and after surgery. Reaching this stability reduces the risk and post-operative complications and the stay in hospital, from which follows both an improvement in the quality of hospitalizations and a greater efficiency of the hospitals themselves.
