Safety 
Do you really know all of the places and ways that AI is being used in your ASC? If not, it’s time to perform an inventory and take control of the situation before it gets away from you. And “getting away from you” could mean everything from survey failures to…
One study that has received a lot of attention coning out the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ ANESTHESIOLOGY 2026 meeting was “Impact of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists on Postoperative Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events and Infection: A Cohort Study.” “The use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) has increased since their approval…
“Enhancing Perioperative Emergency Readiness Through Simulation, ICS, and After-Action Review”—a poster by Rebecca Rayburn, RN, MS, CAPA, ABLS, perianesthesia senior nurse manager pre/post, and Meghan Rider, MS, RN, instructor of clinical nursing, both with University of Rochester Medicine’s Sawgrass Surgery Center—won second prize in the Periop Leader Week 2026 Poster…
The safety and long-term health of your staff are at risk every time they manually handle and transport patient specimens to pathologists. The reason: exposure to toxic formalin solution. The active chemical in formalin is formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen that can cause respiratory irritation, skin sensitization, and other serious…
In many perioperative environments, OR nurses and staff manually handle and transport patient specimens to pathologists. Not only does this involve staff exposure to toxic formalin solution, but it can also introduce unintended variabilities into the integrity of the specimen. At Periop Leader Week, we saw in person a powerful…
We recently spoke with Amanda Heitman, BSN, RN, CNOR, perioperative educational consultant and founder with Periop Anew, about the latest in perioperative staff safety. At Periop Leader Week 2026, she delivered a powerful 30-minute presentation on the topic. (To find out more about Ms. Heitman, scroll to the bottom of…
It's 12:30 pm, and your scrub nurse has been on her feet for five hours. The patient is ready to be moved. As the slide sheet is pulled, you notice her wince, and make a mental note to check in when there’s a moment. It’s a familiar scene. OR nurses…
A new study finds that patients who use cannabis may face a significantly higher risk of heart attack during and after surgery, while also unexpectedly showing a lower risk of blood clots in the veins. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) has promoted the study, which was presented this week…
A new original investigation published online ahead of print in JAMA Surgery tackles the question of whether robot-assisted radical hysterectomy is associated with improved perioperative safety and early patient-reported outcomes compared with open surgery in early-stage cervical cancer. Researchers performed a secondary analysis of the Robot-Assisted Approach to Cervical Cancer…
An article in press published this month in Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology, the official journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, examines the challenges of perioperative anaphylaxis. The article is authored by Dennis K. Ledford, MD, FAAAAI, FACAAI, Mabel and Ellsworth Simmons Professor of Allergy/Immunology…
