Covid-19 and non-operating room anesthesia – a summary of practices at the american university of beirut medical center, lebanon

Abstract

Non-operating room anesthesia is a practice that is gaining popularity and expanding rapidly within the broader field of ambulatory care anesthesia, owing in particular to advancement in procedures and an increasing number of trained proceduralists, as well as improvements in equipment and facilities that can accommodate such procedures. Non-operating room anesthesia, however, does come with its own set of challenges that can adversely affect patient safety during these procedures. Namely, unfamiliar environments that are often remote in location with limited access to resources are some of the many challenges that can face the anesthesiologist providing anesthetic care outside of traditional operating rooms. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic added a multitude of complex and intricate layers of challenges that providers must account for to provide safe anesthetic practice not only to patients but to healthcare workers as well. Thorough planning for procedures beforehand becomes paramount to ensure safety of all parties involved. This includes preprocedural planning, screening, and testing, intraprocedural precautions including proper room preparation, donning of adequate personal protective equipment as well as attempting to minimize aerosolization of the virus, and postprocedural considerations of post anesthetic care and transport. This article summarizes the practices adopted at American University of Beirut Medical Center. © 2020, American University of Beirut. All rights reserved.