Authorship provides academic recognition for substantial intellectual contributions to scholarly articles. Beyond recognition, authorship has become a form of currency within the academic community, acting as an indicator of academic output and thus influencing standing within an institution and the general medical community. It might further impact salary as well as job and research grant funding opportunities. Unfortunately, this emphasis on authorship has also been linked to instances of misconduct. We discuss our personal experience with editorial misconduct hoping to highlight the issue and thereby increase awareness and peer-to-peer control to reduce future authorship misconduct and to encourage others to speak up.

The first measures to reduce the environmental harm from volatile anaesthetics are implementation of minimal fresh gas flow strategies and avoidance of desflurane. Although anaesthetic waste gas capture systems generally exert high capturing efficiencies, only about half of volatile anaesthetics used in the operating room are accessible for capture. Industry-sponsored reports promise a reduction of the global warming potential by both incineration and recycling of captured volatile anaesthetics. However, independent high-quality peer-reviewed studies are needed to confirm these findings.

Clinical guidelines and consensus statements are an essential aid to clinical practice. However, they bring with them risks. Amongst these are the exclusion of key stakeholders, the creation of mutual self-citation networks, and a lack of rigour in implementing and documenting the consensus process. This editorial explores the challenges of producing robust consensus statements and guidelines that have impact, and identifies current frameworks for addressing these. It is important to conduct clinical consensus exercises using recognised and accepted methodologies.

A report on participant views of a two-person check confirming tracheal intubation implemented in their institution found that this check was generally considered feasible and useful, but there was some resistance and some concerns that it would not solve the problem. Social, cultural, and cognitive factors play a role in airway management in the operating theatre, partly because of the pre-eminence of airway management as a cornerstone of the profession of anaesthesia. These factors contribute to loss of situation awareness in airway failure. Although situation awareness might be better maintained by the two-person check, there could be advantages if airway management became the responsibility of the whole operating theatre team. Potential strategies to overcoming the ongoing problem of failed airway management are proposed, including multidisciplinary team training in airway management and a new airway point in the surgical safety checklist time out.

In a previous phase II trial, intraperitoneal local anaesthetics shortened the time interval between surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy, an endpoint associated with improved survival in advanced ovarian cancer. Our objective was to test this in a phase III trial.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) potentially increase the risk of pulmonary aspiration resulting from impaired gastric emptying (IGE). We evaluated the association between GLP-1RAs and IGE using the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

Morphine and hydromorphone have differing onsets, magnitudes, and durations of effects and side-effects. Differences between opioids in their interindividual variabilities in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics might influence rational drug selection. Crossover drug studies can provide more informative interindividual variability data than parallel group studies. Using data from a crossover study of i.v. morphine and hydromorphone in healthy volunteers, we tested the hypothesis that morphine and hydromorphone differ in their interindividual pharmacokinetic variability.

Optimal postoperative pain management is a prerequisite for enhancing functional recovery after surgery. However, many studies assessing analgesic interventions have limitations. Consequently, further improvements in study design are urgently needed. In this focused editorial, we critically review prevalent trial designs and outcome measures including treatment-related adverse events evaluating analgesic interventions. Novel clinical trial designs should improve efficiency and enhance the likelihood of detecting relevant treatment effects. Cohort and database studies using propensity score matching and directed acyclic graphs could provide real-world generalisable information. Procedure-specific and patient-specific trials should allow identification of subpopulations most likely to benefit from a particular intervention after a specific surgical procedure and thus ascertain optimal analgesic strategies in challenging populations.

Life cycle assessment is increasingly used in the healthcare sector to facilitate more environmentally informed supply and medication use. A thorough life cycle assessment comparing the carbon impacts of 10 different single-use anaesthetic drug trays yielded surprising findings. Although life cycle assessment can guide decision-making, results must be interpreted clinically and in light of all available options, including eliminating unnecessary consumption altogether. Effective life cycle assessment in healthcare that is clinically applicable requires expertise from both environmental scientists and clinicians.

Anaesthesia has been shown to impair social functioning, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. The volatile anaesthetic isoflurane potentially disrupts the methionine cycle and trans-sulphuration pathway, contributing to social deficits. Cystathionine-β-synthase (CBS), a key enzyme in this pathway, might be targeted by isoflurane. We investigated the CBS-isoflurane interaction and its role in neuronal function and social behaviour.

Junior anaesthesiologists often find it difficult to gain the trust of surgeons, possibly because of their limited experience and unfamiliarity with surgeons. Therefore, they can face pressure when navigating disagreements with senior surgeons. We investigated whether and how differences in anaesthesiologist-surgeon seniority might impact patient safety.

Aperiodic (nonoscillatory) electroencephalogram (EEG) activity can be characterised by its power spectral density, which decays according to an inverse power law. Previous studies reported a shift in the spectral exponent α from consciousness to unconsciousness. We investigated the impact of aperiodic EEG activity on parameters used for anaesthesia monitoring to test the hypothesis that aperiodic EEG activity carries information about the hypnotic component of general anaesthesia.

To avoid underdosing or overdosing of analgesic medications, a variety of nociception monitors that use distinct techniques have been developed to quantify nociception during general anaesthesia. Although prior meta-analyses have examined the behaviour of nociception monitors vs standard care protocols, they did not include the potentially valuable data for monitor-to-monitor comparisons. In order to capture these data fully and compare the behaviour of these monitors, we conducted a systematic search and network meta-analysis.

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and cyclooxygenase (COX)-2-specific inhibitors provide significant analgesic and opioid-sparing benefits. However, these analgesics are commonly avoided owing to concerns of potential adverse effects. The evidence for NSAID-related adverse effects is conflicting and of poor quality, and these analgesics are safer than what has been implied. Thus, it is imperative that NSAIDs or COX-2-specific inhibitors are administered routinely unless there are well-founded contraindications.

Prehabilitation aims to reduce the impact of major surgery by improving the physical and psychological resilience of patients. Although exercise represents one component of prehabilitation, nutritional and psychological support are also critical to its effectiveness, and any benefits are only likely to be realised if the different components are implemented together, ideally in a behaviour change framework. Implementation of prehabilitation in cardiac surgery has not been as widespread as in other types of surgery, despite many randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of single interventions in this setting. The late adoption of a prehabilitation programme in cardiac surgery represents an opportunity to ensure that it is both clinically effective and cost-effective before widespread roll-out. This was mostly not done for prehabilitation in noncardiac surgery, where programmes were implemented largely without trials of these combined interventions. The most likely chance of an effective prehabilitation programme for cardiac surgery is to combine all the efficacious and implementable single interventions together in one comprehensive evidence-based programme. This should then be tested in an adequately powered multicentre RCT in a representative cardiac surgery population.

This study aimed to assess whether a driving pressure-limiting strategy based on positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) titration according to best respiratory system compliance and tidal volume adjustment increases the number of ventilator-free days within 28 days in patients with moderate to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

The incidence of severe adverse events in children with SARS-CoV-2 undergoing anaesthesia has not been well established. We examined the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe perioperative adverse events in children.

Surgery can induce severe neuroinflammation and negative emotional symptoms, such as anxiety-like behaviour. We studied whether reactive astrocytes in the zona incerta (ZI) mediate surgery-induced anxiety in mice.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled development of natural language algorithms capable of generating coherent texts. We evaluated the quality, validity, and safety of this generative AI in preoperative anaesthetic planning.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is widely accepted as a useful treatment for patients with intractable chronic pain. However, its effectiveness varies between individuals. Therefore, a tool for evaluating its effectiveness in advance is eagerly awaited. We examined whether resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging as a diagnostic and prognostic tool can predict responsiveness to SCS.