Crisis management during anaesthesia: the development of an anaesthetic crisis management manual.

This study describes the development of specific algorithms in clinical anesthesia to address crisis situations. Using the first 4000 reports from the Australian Incident Monitoring Study (AIMS), a team of anesthetists identified a need for 24 algorithms. Investigators created a manual to outline the management approaches and tested it against the incidents from AIMS. The authors conclude that applying these algorithms in daily practice should be considered as decision support when a clinical scenario evolves in an unexpected fashion. This article serves as an introduction to a set of 24 resources that outline structured approaches to crisis management in anesthesia.