Prehospital emergency anaesthesia can be delivered safely and to high standards by well-trained clinical teams despite the physiological instability and high mortality risk of patients.
Updated guidelines from the Association of Anaesthetists affirm that prehospital emergency anaesthesia can be safely delivered by competent teams.
Clinical teams that provide prehospital emergency anaesthesia must be well trained and competent to deliver the procedure to the same standards as their colleagues in the receiving emergency department. Although patients requiring prehospital emergency anaesthesia are often physiologically unstable and have pathology associated with a high mortality, there is good evidence that prehospital emergency anaesthesia can be delivered safely and to high standards.
Lockey et al. (2026) studied this question. Prehospital emergency anaesthesia can be delivered safely and to high standards by well-trained clinical teams despite the physiological instability and high mortality risk of patients.