This historical cohort study highlights the incidence and causes of anesthesia-related mortality and cardiac arrest in private practice between 1955 and 1964.
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Historical rates benchmark mid-century anesthetic mortality; leaves open the magnitude of modern safety gains.
A total of 114,866 anesthetics was administered over a ten-year period (1955 to 1964) by a group of anesthesiologists in private practice. Of this total, 1,027 patients did not survive their surgical-anesthetic experience. The incidence of primary anesthetic death in surgery was 1:3,145. The incidence of primary cardiac arrest was 1:4,994 and the recovery rate was 44.4%. No primary or contributory anesthetic deaths occurred in 43,045 consecutive deliveries. The primary fault of the anesthesiologist was improper management of the anesthetic and the secondary fault was improper management in the immediate postoperative period.
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Harry N. Memery (1965) studied this question.
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