Special Announcement: Guidelines to the Practice of Anesthesia—Revised Edition 2023

Excerpt

This issue of the Journal features the 2023 Revised Edition of the Guidelines to the Practice of Anesthesia.¹ These Guidelines were originally developed, and now updated annually, by the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS) Committee on Standards and are approved by the CAS Board of Directors. They were initially created in 1977 when clinical practice guidelines were not as prevalent as they are today. They have been continually revised and updated to keep pace with medical evidence and knowledge related to patient safety in anesthesia practice. This will be the 46^th annual revision and the 15^th consecutive year that they will be published by our partners at the Journal. The Committee on Standards is very honored to be granted stewardship over the Guidelines through continuous review and periodic updates. Within our committee membership, we strive for broad national and subspeciality representation as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion. The Guidelines are intended to provide a broad framework for safe anesthesia practice in Canada, wherever it is delivered. We are very mindful, when we write recommendations, of that fact that anesthesia care in Canada is delivered in a wide variety of settings that differ notably with respect to facility size, patient complexity, location, staffing, and available resources. Overall, the Guidelines are widely read and frequently cited; for example, at the time of writing, the online version of the 2022 Revised Edition had been downloaded 910 times and cited eight times.² …