American Academy of Pediatrics - Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
2003 Update
The Section has been busy in many areas fulfilling our missions of advocacy, education, research and communication. Through Lynn Maxwell as our first full voting member of a national AAP committee, the Committee on Drugs (COD) has several projects that are relevant to pediatric anesthesiologists. Lynn is working with the FDA section of pediatric drug development as they struggle with the pediatric drug labeling law. The COD is working on statements concerning drugs for pediatric emergencies and drug errors. Dr. Charlie Cot‚ will continue to represent the section at an upcoming meeting with pediatric dentists trying to bring the sedation guidelines promulgated by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, finally into line with the AAP guidelines.
We were gratified to have four of our proposed educational contributions to the AAP annual meeting accepted, then we were even happier when they asked for Yuan-Chi Lin to redo his acupuncture presentation and Tom Mancuso was asked by the Committee on Hospital Care to participate in their educational offering. Connie Houck continues to do an outstanding job of keeping anesthesia and pain issues on the minds of those preparing educational efforts for the Academy.
The website <aap.org/sections/anes/> is seeing some wonderful changes thanks to Joe Cravero. Soon we will have an alternative address that will allow searchers to find our web site much easier. He's developed a large network of helpful links and is looking for more. Please let him know if you'd like to suggest some.
Soon we will see pediatric anesthesiology highlighted on the AAP News' new Subspecialist Page. Dr. Zeev Kain's work on pediatric perioperative anxiety will be displayed.
The Academy of Pediatrics endorsed the sections successful efforts to work with the SPA Governmental Affairs committee and the ASA's Committee on Pediatric Anesthesia to introduce accreditation standards for pediatric anesthesia into the lexicon of the two major accreditation organizations for office surgery, the AAAASF and the AAAHC. Many states are starting to require accreditation for offices doing surgery and it will be important to keep children's care on everyone's minds.
Patricia J. Davidson, MD, FAAP
Chair