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The European Journal of Anaesthesiology (EJA) has achieved a 2025 Impact Factor (IF) of 7.8, marking another important milestone in the journal’s continued growth and influence. This new Impact Factor represents a further increase from the 2024 Impact Factor of 6.8 and continues the strong upward trajectory seen in recent years. Compared with the 2023 […]

Airway management carries some of the highest risk in the ICU. Unlike the controlled operating theatre environment, critically ill patients present significant physiological challenges. At least one in four major in-hospital airway events occur in the ICU, with a high likelihood of serious injury or death. (1) Recurring gaps in care include poor identification of at-risk patients, […]

Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) is used to assess the function of the brain, brainstem, spinal cord, cranial nerves, and peripheral nerves during anaesthesia. Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring aims to reduce nerve damage while preserving the integrity of the nervous system. It can help prevent intraoperative awareness, avoid excessive anaesthetic depth and improve postoperative neurological outcomes (e.g. delirium). (1)(2) Intraoperative monitoring is now becoming part […]

A major shift is occurring in artificial intelligence in perioperative medicine. Previously, AI has been used to process large datasets, including patient records and research data, to identify associations and risk factors according to a narrow band of specific requirements. This worked well within the defined parameters of research and only if the data could be curated. (1) This approach, however, was difficult to integrate into clinical systems with their real-world and real-time demands and workflow.   Now developments in AI, especially machine […]

Historically, perioperative care emphasised intraoperative procedures, even though preoperative consultation and postoperative recovery remained important stages on the pathway. Increased ageing and comorbidity in populations, pressures on hospital capacity, advances in digital health, AI, and remote monitoring are all acting to drive a fundamental transition from anaesthesiology being an intraoperative specialty to a perioperative systems discipline which increasingly recognises how each section of the pathway affects the overall outcome for the patient. Anaesthesiologists are becoming key […]

The Østergaard Declaration sets out a shared European vision for simulation-based education and training, placing patient safety at its core. We spoke with Professor Crina Burlacu, Chair of the ESAIC Simulation Committee, about the origins of the Declaration and its ambitions for the future of healthcare education. At the beginning of my tenure as Chair […]

Every year, millions of high-risk surgical patients experience hemodynamic instability—a condition linked to postoperative morbidity and mortality. Yet only 10% to 40% of these patients receive cardiac output (CO) monitoring 15 which is recommended to identify the underlying causes of hemodynamic instability and guide treatment. Why? Mainly because existing solutions are not accessible to all patients. Cardiac Output Insights changes that […]

Encountering a difficult airway during induction can be extremely intimidating for the anaesthesiologist and a high-risk scenario for any patient. Predicting a difficult airway remains an imperfect science. Contemporary evidence shows that commonly used bedside assessments such as the modified Mallampati classification and thyromental distance fail to identify a substantial proportion of difficult airways when used in isolation. Large systematic reviews confirm that no single clinical test provides […]

Throughout the history of medicine, sepsis has consistently challenged caregivers. The discovery of antibiotics brought significant advances in treating sepsis, but germ theory did not fully explain the pathogenesis of sepsis: many patients with sepsis still died even if antibiotic treatment had successfully killed off the pathogen that caused it. Now we understand that the dysregulated response of the host, not the germ, drives the pathogenesis of sepsis. (1) In 2016, the Sepsis-3 Task Force on Sepsis defined sepsis as a life-threatening organ dysfunction arising from a dysregulated host response to infection. This shifted clinical and research […]