Anesthesia the next target in climate battle: Docs suggest reducing anesthesia: Would you suffer to combat climate change?
NY Post: Experts are now recommending that doctors reduce their use of certain kinds of anesthesia in order to combat the effects of climate change. Dr. Mohamed Fayed, a senior anesthetist at Detroit’s Henry Ford Health, made the suggestion during the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ annual conference last Friday in Orlando, Florida. “Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” he said. Dr. Fayed added, “No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas — without affecting patient care.”
Research notes that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, which are regarded as the primary driver of global climate change. An hour of surgery using an inhaled anesthetic is equivalent to driving as many as 470 miles, according to a 2010 study.
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Flashback 2020 Study in American Cancer Society Journal in 2020 Fretted over ‘carbon footprint of cancer care’ – ACS Journal: “Climate change and cancer” – Excerpt: “To date, no studies have estimated the carbon footprint of cancer care…The energy expenditure associated with operating cancer treatment facilities and medical devices, as well as the manufacturing, packaging, and shipment of devices and pharmaceuticals, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions in cancer care…Some cancer treatment facilities have begun to consider their own carbon footprint and started a process to achieve carbon neutrality.”
Climate Depot’s Morano: “Here is a question for the American Cancer Society: If you need cancer treatment, would you go to a cancer treatment center that was worried about its carbon footprint? Or one that was worried about delivering the best possible modern care possible?”
By: Marc Morano
https://nypost.com/2023/01/30/doctors-recommend-cutting-anesthesia-to-combat-climate-change/
Docs suggest reducing anesthesia: Would you suffer to combat climate change?
By Adriana Diaz
Experts are now recommending that doctors reduce their use of certain kinds of anesthesia in order to combat the effects of climate change.
Dr. Mohamed Fayed, a senior anesthetist at Detroit’s Henry Ford Health, made the suggestion during the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ annual conference last Friday in Orlando, Florida. (LINK)
“Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” he said.
Dr. Fayed added, “No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas — without affecting patient care.”
Research notes that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, which are regarded as the primary driver of global climate change.
An hour of surgery using an inhaled anesthetic is equivalent to driving as many as 470 miles, according to a 2010 study.
Most general anesthesia procedures require a high fresh gas flow at the start and end of a procedure to quickly achieve the desired effect. But, according to Fayed, it is safe and effective to lower the flow at other times.
Anesthesia must be expertly administered: Too much of a drug can result in brain damage, coma or even death. But too little can mean a patient waking up during the procedure and experiencing intense pain, not to mention psychological trauma.
For their study, researchers from Henry Ford Health dialed down gas flow in an effort to reduce anesthesia use to under 3 liters every minute per surgery whenever possible.
This effort focused on the use of inhaled anesthetics only and produced a substantial decrease in use of the drugs, sometimes by as much as half.
Medical experts at Henry Ford Health also removed the drug desflurane from all operating rooms, noting that it produces the most significant carbon-dioxide emissions.
Data was gathered from 13,000 patients who underwent anesthesia from March 2021 to July 2021. Prior to the intervention, 65% of cases were limited to the 3 L/m threshold. By the end, 93% of cases achieved that.
“For a long time, there was a notion that the greenhouse effect caused in health care settings was an inevitable and unavoidable cost of providing patient care,” said Dr. Fayed.
“But we have learned that reducing anesthetic gas flow is one of the many ways health care can lessen its contribution to the global warming crisis, along with reducing waste, turning off lights and equipment when not in use and challenging practice habits, as long as they don’t compromise patient care.”
The researchers now are aiming to reduce the level of fresh gas flow to less than 2 L/m throughout the system.
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Study in American Cancer Society Journal in 2020 Fretted over ‘carbon footprint of cancer care’ – From 2020: ACS Journal: “Climate change and cancer” – Excerpt: “To date, no studies have estimated the carbon footprint of cancer care…The energy expenditure associated with operating cancer treatment facilities and medical devices, as well as the manufacturing, packaging, and shipment of devices and pharmaceuticals, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions in cancer care…Some cancer treatment facilities have begun to consider their own carbon footprint and started a process to achieve carbon neutrality. However, the proportion of health care institutions reporting environmental sustainability activities lags behind other economic sectors”
Climate Depot’s Morano: “Here is a question for the American Cancer Society: If you need cancer treatment, would you go to a cancer treatment center that was worried about its carbon footprint? Or one that was worried about delivering the best possible modern care possible?”
How many can they come up with? Surgery Causes Global Warming?! Study Shows ‘Anesthesia Agent Is Greatest Potential Contributor to Global Warming’– Claim: ‘Anesthetics used by a busy hospital contribute as much to global warming as the emissions from hundreds of cars per year’-
Claim: Surgical General Anesthetic is Contributing to Climate Change– Switching from general to regional anaesthetics may help cut greenhouse emissions and ultimately help reduce global warming, a new study claims. While regional anaesthetics numb a certain part of the body, general anaesthetics make patients totally unconscious for what tend to be more serious procedures. But unlike regional anaesthetics, generals use volatile and environmentally-unfriendly halogenated agents, such as desflurane, or nitrous oxide. … ‘Green-gional’ anesthesia: the non-polluting benefits of regional anesthesia to decrease greenhouse gases and attenuate climate change
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Resons Net Zero will hurt:
It will make you poor
It will make you cold
It will make you hungry
Now it will make you hurt…
Dr. Mohamed Fayed, anesthetist: ““Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” he said.“
What proof does he have for his statements about global warming affecting our lives and the need for GHG emission reductions? They are completely outside of his area of expertise and he offered no proof of their validity.
Over the last 300+ years, since the depths of the Little Ice age, the Earth has become slightly warmer and wetter, a boon to Man and all other flora and fauna. Not one metric of severe weather has increased in frequency, intensity nor duration over the last 100+ years. This includes hurricanes, tornadoes, other storms, floods, droughts, wildfires & etc. Additionally, CO2 fertilization has increased the leafy area of the globe by about 30% over the past approximately 40 years. All of these data are available in various scientific studies (see especially Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.) and U.S. government and UN IPCC reports.
Hitting Dr Fayed with a malpractice suit for his depraved indifference to the well-being of patients relative to speculative political causes would be appropriate.
As a physician myself I just want to point out this story proves an expensive university education followed by years of post graduate training doesn’t guarantee intelligence or insight. As an example:
“Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,”
Based on what? So an average 0.1 degree C per decade rise in unreliably assessed global average temperatures over 150 years is something this fellow can feel in his daily life and, even more stunning, can tell it is from the CO2 emissions from industrial society even though half the rise in temperature occurred before our CO2 emissions could have had any impact.
What exactly are those effects he is concerned about? Is it the rise in nutrition, wealth, health, life in the biosphere, democracy, freedom, living conditions, child survival, greening of forests, crop lands and ocean? Which of these affects of rising CO2 and temperature are making this highly educated physician so concerned? There are NO observed adverse trends in weather events that can be attributed to climate change – just ask the IPCC.
It seems Dr Fayed has been working with faulty equipment and has inhaled too much of his anaesthetic gas.
Surely any anaesthetic inhaled by the patient will be metabolised by the patient and converted to CO2 and water vapour. Given that the patient is not actually exercising during the operation, then maybe his metabolism will be damped down a little and he will not be emitting as much CO2 or water vapour as he would if he were awake and active. So (according to “THE SCIENCE” aka “THE PROPAGANDA) his emissions will be reduced and the planet will be saved. Hooray!
I just have one thing to say to Dr. Fayed, “GFY”.
“Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,”
What’s affecting our life more and more is the INSANE energy policies conceived by know-nothing politicians who think CO2 is poison.
Once they’ve decided to reduce “the flow of anesthetic gas”, they’ve decided that patient care is not the main concern.
You have to wonder if they’re pinching all of the other essentials to good care:
Once the surgery and the patient are second guessed, how long is it before they decide it’s a waste of time for most patients?
I have little to no respect for the medical community. They showed their colors during the Covid debacle. Medical administrators marched lockstep with government administrators who marched lockstep with world government administrators who ignored all data but their own. I put the blame on administrators at every level but ninety percent of practitioners are also to blame for sheepishly following along. It is clear that more education is not the same as becoming wiser. Some where along the education process wisdom seems to be sucked out of the student. It is appalling.
It does not go unnoticed that the “doctor” quoted in this story works for a hospital named after someone whose propaganda was used to inspire a truly evil use of gas on human beings.
I suppose we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s his guilt over cashing paychecks printed with that infamous bigot’s name fueling this inane response.
Maybe Dr. Fayed knows something about anaesthesia, notwithstanding the obvious fact that he would be better as a red nosed clown.
But I would bet a million to a pinch of sh1t that he knows even less about climate than our old chum Michael Mann.
How would Fayed feel about that same Michael Mann twiddling the anaesthetic knobs if he was being wheeled into theatre for major surgery?
A Sabine Hossenfelder YouTube video aimed at explaining the physics of the greenhouse effect, in fact hilariously refutes CO2 warming by contradicting itself! Sabine starts – correctly – by pointing out the simplistic model most people believe is plain wrong. CO2 does not trap some IR that otherwise would have made it out to space. Because none of it makes it more than about 20 meters. That’s CO2 warming argument #1 refuted by the simple fact of atmospheric saturation of CO2 IR-absorption.
https://youtu.be/oqu5DjzOBF8
So then we retreat to a second defensive line of CO2 warming argument #2: the emission height story. Maybe you’ve heard it. I had – but I was amazed I hadn’t realised its fatal flaw that Sabine pointed out at exactly 10 minutes into the video. The emission height CO2 warming mechanism depends on the atmosphere getting colder with height. But that only happens up to the stratosphere at about 12 km. Above that, the temperature trend reverses and the atmosphere gets warmer with increasing height! So now, more CO2 would do the opposite and cool the planet. (I’m amazed I hadn’t seen this huge hole in the emission height argument.) “Preindustrial” CO2 levels already had the emission height at the base of the stratosphere – so further elevating it pushes it to levels with higher, not lower, temperature resulting conversely in cooling, not warming. So the whole emission height argument #2 is just as stillborn as the absurdly simply saturation-ignoring trapped-IR argument #1.
Thus finally as in the German army’s defences at the Somme in France in 1916 during WW1 there is retreat to defensive line #3. Now it gets very hairy and tortuously complex and we start talking about the spectral trough of CO2 IR absorption and subtle effects that widen this trough. The whole narrative now hides behind trenches of arcane complexity. However the hilarious thing is that at this point, at 13 minutes and 13 seconds, Sabine explains that the CO2 spectral trough widening argument – defensive line #3 – also depends on the atmosphere getting colder with height! This is extraordinary self-contradiction because in argument #2 we were already shown – at 10 minutes – that the atmosphere only cools with height up to the stratosphere, after which it warms with further ascent.
So argument #3 depends on air cooling with height which argument #2 already shows is false in the stratosphere. So Sabine’s whole video is a spectacular own-goal for the CO2 warming argument.
In the closing minutes Sabine silently recognises these problems and tries to rescue a CO2 warming scenario by bringing in layer after layer of new complexity: it’s not just CO2 but also water and methane plus every wavelength has its own emission height, etc. But one thing is clear. The simplistic CO2 “heat trapping” argument that most warmists swear by is, as Linus Pauli would have said, “not even wrong”, but impossible. And the huge complexity of the real IR dynamics mean that unexpected answers again become possible. Such as that CO2 causes no warming whatsoever.
Thanks Sabine – a very helpful video on the CO2 story!
Great Doc. So we can reduce your fees accordingly.
CO2 doesn’t drive climate.
Does this not imply that there has been an over use of anesthesia all these years. I would have thought it was crucial to work out exactly how much was required, no more, no less.
“Do no harm” is supposed to be a doctor’s first responsibility to the patient, not Gaia.
That oath has been so adulterated over the years that it’s practically meaningless anymore.
“Do no harm” appears nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath. If you were compelled never to risk harm, you wouldn’t do anything at all. You’d just sit there and watch, like trying to make an omelette without breaking an egg.
Do any of these idiots know how much nitrous gets blown into the atmosphere by various race cars. One of my younger brothers builds race cars, flat track, drag, street, and he buys nitrous in 100-200lb bottles routinely. Multiply that by 100,000 across America, racing is widespread and big business.
I think we would be better served to eliminate doctors like Fayed. I can’t believe someone this stupid is qualified to effectively treat anyone. Hey genius, please explain how the effects of global warming are affecting us more and more! What a jerk you are. The gullible warming has destroyed your brain.
“Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more” WRONG
” and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” WRONG.
“No matter how small each effect is, it will add up.” WRONG
“As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas” WRONG
“without affecting patient care.” And WRONG again.
The morons who recommend such nonsense should be condemned to a lifetime of anesthesia denial. I suggest they begin with penile reduction surgery and surgical castration.
My roommate is looking into a couple of surgery including two knee replacements. It turns out the better solution for that is a spinal with a local nerve block. Recovery is better and less risk from the dangers of a general.
On the other hand, the other surgery will require a general. As for how much anesthesia, they only give you enough to do the job. Most of what they give you is fentanyl with enough of something to keep you asleep so you don’t fight the breathing tube. I don’t think they use anywhere near the gas that the author thinks they do.
Agreed – anesthetic gasses are used much less today then they were a few decades ago. They are still used in dentistry, but even a lot of that has switched over to IV sedation rather than nitrous oxide. General anesthesia can be accomplished with IV drugs and no gasses, but perhaps this dumb doc is one of those who like doing things the old fashioned way (or at least he thinks lots of other doctors do).
IMO this is a tempest (stirred up by one ignorant doctor) in a teapot. Gases for anesthesia are used far less today than just a few decades ago. Mostly in dental surgery these days… and mostly for people who suffer from anxiety and dental phobias.
I have had several surgeries in my lifetime and the last time I got “gassed” was back in the early and mid-80’s. And for one surgery (when I was a child) I was given a choice. I was terrified of needles and the anesthesiologist said I could have the needle or get the gas. He tried to discourage me from taking the gas but I was determined to avoid the IV needle. I wish I had listened to him! Once he put that mask over my face I could have swore the other end of the hose was connected to the exhaust pipe of a tractor trailer! Talk about the most malodorous, gag-inducing stench I had ever smelled – kind of a mix of diesel exhaust, skunk spray and stale cat urine….worse yet, when I woke up from the op I was dry heaving and gagging like crazy. And kept doing so for at least a day…
Ever since then I tell the doc that I have gotten super sick from anesthesia in the past and therefore they don’t gas me. IV anesthesia only. I’ll never forget how that stuff smelled, so yes, I’d have known it if they gave it to me because it lingered in my body for at least a couple of days.
So complaining about a type of anesthesia that isn’t used much is much ado about nothing.
I guess the take-away here is stay away from this idiot doc and don’t patronize any dentist who believes in CAGW!
Ether smelled like Juicy-Fruit gum, which I hated. I threw up after, too.
I reckon that 3litre per min is oxy and small volume gas not all anaesthetic
and as for the entire premise?
well for surgery I have to drive 400 or more km each way , for basic scans etc i have to often do 300k round trip IF i can even ACCESS appointments
hanging would be too good for these morons,
ill wishing is frowned upon but by hell I personally wish them the worst!!
“But unlike regional anaesthetics, generals use volatile and environmentally-unfriendly halogenated agents, such as desflurane, or nitrous oxide. “
A nice demonstration of chemical ignorance. Nitrous oxide is NOT “halogenated”, since halogens refer to fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine, none of which is found in nitrous oxide.
I think you are interpreting the comma incorrectly. The author means halogenated agents, one of which is desflurane, and nitrous oxide. Anesthesiologists are quite aware that nitrous doesn’t have halogens. Don’t be so quick to assume people don’t know what they are talking about. Gotchas have a way of back-firing on you.