Hi Everyone,

This week Matt and I agreed to get together to do another journal club episode (or more accurately I printed out an article, put it in Matt’s pigeon hole and told him to make himself available or else!).

We went to one of our favourite journals IJOA (International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia), where we chose an article from the latest edition published in May.

The article is entitled “A narrative review of the literature relevant to obstetric anesthesiologists: the 2023 Gerard Ostheimer lecture.”

The background to this article is that every year the north american Society of Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology (SOAP) hold an annual conference. One of the highlights of these annual conferences is this lecture which is researched and then presented by a well respected obstetric anesthesiologist from the north american community. The lecture is a narrative review of the previous years published literature highlighting important papers and discussing their importance and relevance particularly in relation to current north american practice.

This year’s lecture was presented by Pervez Sultan from Stanford University, and it is drawn from a review of articles published in 2022 from 66 different journals. Over 12 different themes are discussed including (but not limited to) TIVA for GA Caesareans, dexamethasone for post CS analgesia, predicting epidural blood patch success, dural puncture epidurals and a number of other interesting topics.

Join Matt and I as we discuss these and muse over what relevance they may have to our current practice here in Western Australia as well as a couple terrible olympic themed dad jokes to close!

A narrative review of the literature relevant to obstetric anesthesiologists: the 2023 Gerard W. Ostheimer lecture  Int J Obstet Anesth 2024 May:58:103973. doi: 10.1016/j.ijoa.2023.103973. Epub 2024 Jan 3.