Congrats! A&A Editorial Award Winners

Uday Agrawal, MD

The 2025 Anesthesia & Analgesia Editorial Awards, held on Friday, March 21, at the 2025 Annual Meeting, presented by IARS and SOCCA, highlighted vital articles published in Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A) and A&A Practice in the past year. Editor-in-Chief of A&A Jaideep Pandit, MA, BMBCh, DPhil, FRCA, FFPMRCA, DM, MBA, moderated this awards session. If you missed this session, below you will find a summary of the awards and the related articles.

A&A Practice Editors’ Choice Award

Point-of-Care Gastric Ultrasound to Identify a Full Stomach on a Diabetic Patient Taking a Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Receptor Agonist – Laura Giron Arango, MD, Anahi Perlas, MD, FRCPC

This important and practical work is the culmination of 15 years of research in gastric ultrasound by the authors and defines and validates an algorithm to approach bedside gastric ultrasound. Here, the authors report a case where bedside gastric ultrasound impacted management for a patient with diabetes on a GLP-1 agonist and illustrates the utility of gastric ultrasound for personalized patient care to reduce risk of pulmonary aspiration.  

A&A Most Viewed Article Award

Perioperative Patients With Hemodynamic Instability: Consensus Recommendations of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation – Michael Scott, MB, ChB, APSF Hemodynamic Instability Writing Group

This white paper brought together a group of 20 international experts to consolidate data from 24 key papers in order to advance care for management of patients with hemodynamic instability. Together, the authors developed 17 key recommendations including, for example, strategies to implement continuous noninvasive blood pressure monitoring both in the intraoperative and postoperative setting, which can be particularly high risk for patients.

A&A Most Cited Article

Association Between Intraoperative Arterial Hypotension and Postoperative Delirium After Noncardiac Surgery: A Retrospective Multicenter Cohort Study – Luca J. Wachtendorf, MD, PhD, et al.

Prior work from this group found no association between intraoperative hypotension and stroke during surgery. Here, they investigated a related question in over 300,000 patients and found that longer periods of hypotension (with MAP < 55 mm Hg) were associated with delirium, perhaps related to subtle infarctions, and conclude that the MAP should be kept > 55 mm Hg.

Editors’ Choice Awards

First Place 

The Global Anesthesia Workforce Survey: Updates and Trends in the Anesthesia Workforce – Tyler Law, MD et al.

Dr. Law and colleagues provide an update to the seminal Global Anesthesia Workforce Survey collected from 2015-2016 which provided much needed data that enabled individual countries to advocate for additional anesthesia resources. He notes that while overall anesthesia providers are increasing globally, disparities continue to exist, and nonphysicians have had a huge impact on the anesthesia workforce. They created an additional resource to visualize their findings here.

Second Place

Impact of Intraoperative Dexamethasone on Perioperative Blood Glucose Levels: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials – Vasyl Katerenchuk, MD et al.

This metaanalysis answers the question, “What is the impact of dexamethasone on postoperative blood glucose levels compared to placebo and are the changes clinically relevant?” In brief, while blood glucose levels are elevated up to 24 hours after dexamethasone administration, for most patients the increase is not clinically significant, though clinical contextualization is important.

Third Place

A Propensity-Matched Cohort Study of Intravenous Iron versus Red Cell Transfusions for Preoperative Iron-Deficiency Anemia – Una E Choi, MD et al.

How does preoperative intravenous iron infusion compare with red blood cell administration in patients with iron deficiency anemia? In this propensity matched cohort study, Dr. Choi and coauthors found a reduced mortality, reduced morbidity, and a higher postoperative hemoglobin in patients who received preoperative intravenous iron treatment as compared with red blood cell administration, suggesting the therapy may be of benefit in this patient population.

Honorable Mentions

• Care of the Pediatric Patient for Ambulatory Tonsillectomy With or Without Adenoidectomy: The Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia Position Statement
• Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia Updated Consensus Statement on Perioperative Blood Glucose Management in Adult Patients With Diabetes Mellitus Undergoing Ambulatory Surgery