VAT logoPrimary Internet Resources for Anaesthetists

Last updated 14 August 1997. Comments or criticism to: Chris Thompson


Contents:



Primary Anaesthesia Sites

ACCRI (Anesthesia and Critical Care Resources on the Internet) (US mirror here) is the largest and by far the most complete listing of Internet resources for anaesthetists. All the links are maintained in a searchable database, though you can browse also. Since virtually all the known internet anaesthesia resources are listed in ACCRI, I suggest going there if you are searching for a particular society or department. If you ever need the full contents of the ACCRI database e-mailed to you (beware, it's a VERY big file!), send a blank email message to accri@gasnet.med.yale.edu. Or just click here!

If you are more interested in browsing to 'see what's available', Keith Ruskin's GasNet and Virtual Library (both mirrored at the University of Rotterdam) remain useful. Other excellent sites include Gary Malet's substantial and extremely well organised listing of general medical and anaesthesia information in the Medical Matrix site, the Hardin Anesthesia MetaDirectory, Paul Ting's anaesthesiology section at MiningCo, Martingdale's Medical and Surgical - Anesthesiology Centre (with 170k of links to all kinds of medical and non-medical sites), AnesthesiaWeb, hosted by Roche, which contains links to Duke University's educational material (free subscription required), and Anesthesiology Village, a Hewlett-Packard sponsored site with case studies, conferences and links. John Oyston's Anaesthetist's Home Page is a useful starting point for medicine related searches and Piet Beckaert's Anaesthesia International is particularly useful for anaesthesia providers in developing countries.

US residents might find Gaseous Anomaly useful, with discussion rooms, information on jobs etc.

InVivo is a large French language site.

E-Medicine is a comprehensive free on-line textbook of emergency medicine.

Several sites stand out as 'reference' sites for certain geographic areas, and their significant local content makes them worthwhile places to visit:

Asia - Singapore Anaesthesia Web
Australia - Australasian Anaesthesia, University of Queensland
Canada - Ottawa General
Europe - Dutch Anesthesia Corner , ACCRI, InVivo (France, French language), Spain (en Español), Greek Society of Anaesthetists
USA - Gasnet

Please contact the Chapter Organiser if your site should be mentioned here!



Upcoming Conference Lists

At last the The International Anesthesia Calendar List is here. This is an attempt to use advanced database technology to allow conference organisers to remotely post their meetings into a database that anyone can browse or search. Please use this whenever possible. I hope it will remove the need to check each of the small lists below:

Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Future Meetings List
Ross Kennedy's Christchurch NZ list
Gasnet Conference List - US and the World
The ACCRI Medical Congress List - Europe and the World - now searchable.
International Conference List in the Dutch Anesthesiology corner
Oyston Associates Conference List - Canada and the World
PSL Group Meeting list - very complete
California Society of Anaesthetists meetings



E-mail Discussion Lists

There's only one place to find out all about them: the ACCRI Discussion Groups List . This is a complete listing of all the e-mail discussion lists that have relevance to anaesthesia. Make sure that when you subscribe you save a copy of the help document that you get - it can be very useful later on!

I strongly suggest subscribing to David Crippen's CCM-L, Keith Ruskin's GasNet Anesthesiology list, and Andrew Sopchak's Anest-L list. Here's some information about spammers (uninvited junk-mail).

Discussion archives are available for GasNet and Anest-L.

BioMedNet are involved in Critical Care discussion groups and Journals, and there is a web based discussion group for UK anaesthetists.



UseNet News Groups and Web Chat

UseNet News Groups are an alternative way of becoming involved in anaesthesia discussions on the internet. A specific newsreading application is preferable (I recommend Simon Fraser's MT-Newswatcher on the Mac), though it is possible to use Netscape's internal news reader.

Stephen Barasch <sbara@gate.net> has developed an anaesthesiology related set of News Groups. To access Dr. Barasch's Anaesthesia News server, configure your news reader to host 24.96.62.70 and leave your userid and password fields blank. After logon, please read the group anes.announcements for introductory information.

Discussions from the major anaesthesia related e-mail groups are echoed here. If you dislike getting e-mail from all the lists all the time, think about unsubscribing from them, and instead checking them periodically via the News Group system. Remember that if you reply to a News Group posting, your reply will only appear in the News Group system (you can send a copy to the original poster by e-mail) - it will not appear in the main e-mail discussion list at all. The best way around this is to send your reply to the correct mail list server by e-mail, and it will ultimately be echoed in the News Group; so long as you keep the subject line unchanged, your posting will be threaded correctly, and readers of both systems will

Personally I very much prefer News over Mail based discussion groups, however not everyone has access to News, so most of us are stuck with the mail based systems. The advantages are no unwanted e-mail, threaded discussions, only reading those threads that interest you, full archiving and searching, no unwanted attachments arriving on your machine, etc. The only disadvantage is that News reading needs to be done on-line.

HeartBoard is a web based Perfusion and Cardiac Anesthesia discussion forum.

BiomedNet provides the Critical Care Forum and other discussion groups. You must register first.



Journals, Newsletters and Abstract Pages

Without a doubt the most comprehensive listings is the MedWeb at Emory, which lists every medical journal on the Web and is the best general place to start from. The ACCRI Journal Listing is the best location for anaesthesia jounrals and newsletters. Information about requirements for authors is available here and here.

Anaesthesia - Electronic Jounals

WFSA produce Update in Anaesthesia - an internet and print journal, primarily for anaesthetists in developing countries. Full text.

Electronic Synopses in Anesthesia - and the Australian mirror of this GasNet site - the world's first full-text peer-reviewed electronic anaesthesia Journal.

The Internet Journal of Anesthesiology is a new full-text peer reviewed electronic journal organised by Olivier C. Wenker, M.D.

The Internet Journal of Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine. (Embedded midi file!)

Anesthesia On-Line - UK based.

Anaesthesia - Print Jounals

American Journal of Anesthesiology - table of contents and abstracts (publisher site here)
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine - full text free until August 1998, then subscription required.
Anaesthesia - table of contents and abstracts
Anaesthesia and Intensive Care - table of contents only.
Anesthesiology - table of contents, abstracts (searchable; including the ASA meeting) - great!
British Journal of Anaesthesia - current contents, contents archive, instructions for authors etc.
Der Anaesthetist - Journal of Swiss, German and Austrian Anaesthetists Societies - table of contents, abstracts by subscription
Journal of Clinical Anaesthesia - Elsevier - contents only
Journal of Clinical Monitoring - table of contents and abstracts.
Journal of Neurosurgical Anaesthesia - table of contents and abstracts
Nitric Oxide
Resuscitation - table of contents only
Survey of Anesthesiology - Williams and Wilkins - table of contents, selected full text articles.
Thai Journal of Anesthesiology - Abstracts

Newsletters

Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation Newsletter
ANZICS Newsletter
Malignant Hyperthermia Association US Newsletter
Michael Jacobson's Journal Club
ESCTAIC Newsletter
WuScope Newsletter

Other Medical Journals

Annals of Internal Medicine - Journal of the American College of Physicians; featured articles
Elsevier has a service called 'ScienceDirect'; this emails selected journal content direct to you.
Economist -
Evidence-based Medicine - from the American College of Physicians; featured articles and indexes
Bandolier - the Journal of Evidence Based Medicine
British Medical Journal - full text of major articles
Computers and Biomedical Research
CQ: Quarterly Journal of Cost and Quality
JAMA - and other Journals of the American Medical Association.
JAMIA - Journal of the American Informantics Association (full text)
Journal of the US National Cancer Institute
Lancet - free registration; tables of contents and full text&images of leading articles
Medical Education On-Line - on-line journal for Medical Educators
Medical Journal of Australia - pre-publication peer review of submissions
McGill Journal of Medicine - full text
Nature -
Neurosurgery - the official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons
Oxford University Press has tables of contents and abstracts from all its journals on the net.
Science -
Scientific American
New England Journal of Medicine - abstracts of major articles
Physician and Sports Medicine
Current Clinical Strategies - practice guideline repository for O&G, Paeds, general medicine, family health etc



Anesthesiology Patient Simulators

Manikin:

A listing of Anaesthesia Departments currently using patient simulators is available at Rochester, a good starting point for information about simulators .
The Bristol Medical Simulation Centre, first in the UK
The Stanford Patient Simulator
The CAE Patient Simulator
The Pat-Sim1 Simulator
The METI simulator - and a discussion page
The Loral Simulator - no web page but try e-mailing Willem L. van Meurs, Ph.D at UFL.
The Leiden Simulator or e-mail Dr. Vimal Chopra.

Software Based Patient Simulators:

A large part of Ty Smith's life work in simulation has been incorporated into the amazing BODY Simulation™ total human body software simulation (down to each waveform and every heart beat) by Advanced Simulation Corporation. Having seen this in action I can say that it is absolutely amazing. The site does not do it justice unfortunately, so do try to actually get the software yourself somehow. You do need a fast PC though.

 



Educational Resources

The University of Dundee has a set of multiple choice questions for anaesthesia trainees.

Medical nomenclature problem? Try the on-line GrayLab Medical Dictionary.

Edwin Inglis has a large collection of educational links, not just medical, including physics, the arts etc. AJ Wright's Medical History page includes a significant section on Anaesthesia. Michael Bookallil provides a monthly 'articles of interest' review.

Textbook Purchasing Online
Amazon.com offer an exhaustive range of books that may be ordered on-line.
First Internet Bookshop - books and CD-ROM's all can be ordered online.

Anaesthesia - general:
The GasNet Global Textbook of Anaesthesiology is the original! Contains some peer-reviewed articles, with graphics, sounds and images where appropriate. Popular, especially in the US.

The UCSF Anesthesia Keyword List contains brief notes about a huge set of key words.

Anaesthesia reference notes, often in point form are available from John Doyle's excellent web site in Toronto, The University of Basel Anesthesiology Resident's Handbook, Primary Anesthesia Topics: A Study Guide (University of Wisconsin), the list of lectures at the University of Queensland, the University of Rio deJaniero's medical students page (the sections on basic procedures eg intubation and the clinical calculators are very good), Vanderbilt's emergency airway management course notes, and The Green Book from the Department of Anaesthesia, the Hospital for Sick Children at the University of Ontario with protocols and guidelines for several paediatric anaesthesia problems, the National Center for Emergency Medicine and Informatics has great collection of clinical score calculators (Glasgow Coma, Apgar scores etc) and more, and Donal Shanahan's Anatomy resources are great! Check out the HMSBeagle resource on MRI.

Latex Allergy:
Steve Yentis' latex-free equipment list.
The Latex Allergy Cart
The Cleveland Clinic Latex Allergy Cart
Anesthetic management of the latex-allergic patient, bibliography, latex allergy etc
Latex Allergy Information Resource Page
How to manage a latex allergic patient
Cleveland Clinic: Management of the Latex Allergic Patient
The Latex Allergy Information Resource
Care of the Hospitalized Latex-Sensitized Patient - a paper by Linda L. Gehring, RN, MS, Division of Allergy/lmmunology, Medical College of Wisconsin.
Guidelines for the management of latex allergies and safe use of latex in perioperative practice settings AORN Journal, October 1997
Latex Allergy News
Guidelines for the Management of Latex Allergies and Safe Latex Use in Health Care Facilities

Icons, images and clip art:
University of Kansas Medical Center, Dept. of Radiology, Artwork Collection
Clip Art Collection
Clip Art Searcher
Doctornet Online Medical Clip Art
LifeArt Images - commercial medical image creation.

Telemedicine:
Some links include:
JMA - a South Australian Telemedicine project
Telemedicine Information Exchange - general info
Telemedicine and Telehealth Networks - abstracts and general info

CME Providers
CME Unlimited Online - on-line search and ordering of CME audio tapes etc

Case Conferences:
Case Conferences at Penn State University
Case Conferences at MedConnect (need to be a registered user)
Reuters Health News - have a free interactive general medical case each month

General Medical Resources:
For general medicine the Achoo site is fantastic, and OMNI, Medical World Search, BioMedLink and Healthweb are excellent general medicine lists and search tools. Martingdale's Medical and Surgical contains 170k of interesting links. Medical Education On-Line is a site specifically for the dissemination of internet medical educational resources. The Hardin MetaDictionary of Internet Health Sources indexes sites on all aspects of medicine, including a good section on anesthesiology. Cliniweb at Oregon Health Sciences University provides a table of contents and MeSH index to general medical information on the Web. It is well planned and comprehensive, a great starting point.

Principles of Medical Practice 1997 Edition is a fulltext basic medical textbook.

US National Center for Biotechnology Information - useful for medline, genome studies etc. Pedinfo includes a listing of internet resources about most paediatric congenital syndromes, congenital malformations, and inborn errors of metabolism.

Basic Drug information is available from Nurses PDR in the US and The Australian Prescription Products Guide.

The Cambridge Histopathology Online Atlas is a detailed pathology library.

 



Patient Care Resources

A translator which converts common anaesthetic phrases into other languages, started by Sidney Helperin, M.D., is available (through GasNet) by clicking here.



Computer Software for Anaesthetists

SCATA (Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia) have a useful list of applications. Stefan Harms Linux Anesthesia Modular Device Interface concept is about an open source software interface for anaesthesia software.

Gene Worth has made a handy site for 'Palmtop Computing Applications in Medical Care'. Palm Pilot sites include Jim Thompson's Palm Pilot Pages, Doctor Palm Pilot and the University of Michigan Palmtop Taskforce.

Steve Shafer's software server at Stanford (including Stanpump for both PC and Mac and IVA-SIM for computer controlled drug delivery, Richard Epstein's PK-SIM anaesthesia drug simulator, as well as a lot of simulation and pharmacological modeling software).

http://gasnet.med.yale.edu/lamdi/

Rob J. Roy from Albany NY has made a detailed web page about a neural net trained, MLAEP feedback controlled propofol infusion system.

I have a page with information about making cables and software for connecting monitoring devices to computers (emphasis on the Mac; useful for PC's also), as does Martin Sedlmayer.

James Derrick has written 'Monitor', a Mac application for datalogging and realtime trend display of patient data; special versions of this application have been developed to feedback control a variety of agents. James also has an educational arrhythmia program for the Mac in the same site.

Mark Colson has written a (windows executable) respiratory physiology simulation.

Robert Jones has written an excellent ASA airway algorithm trainer (runs on Mac only) which features real-time simulations of actual difficult scenarios.

HealthQuiz distribute preoperative assessment software which I understand to be based on Mike Roizon's original work.

Prologic distribute a medical datalogging application called NarkoData (in German language only) which can run on both Mac and Windows. The complete manual is available in German.

Jim Philip's Gas Man®, an excellent software depiction of anaesthetic gas uptake, is now available from the GasMan® web site.

A large part of Ty Smith's life work in simulation has been incorporated into the amazing BODY Simulation™ total human body software simulation (down to each waveform and every heartbeat) by Advanced Simulation Corporation.

Johan Gabrielsson has developed a free simulation tool called MAXSIM (runs under DOS, Windows (3.10, 3.11, 95, NT etc), a simulation package for computer aided PK and PD, as well as some PK/PD datasets with recommended modelling approaches.

Frank Fischer has a page about Java applications in anaesthesia and a Ventilation simulator.

Alan Hope's Advanced Software for Anaesthetists site demonstrates his interest in neural networks, ray-tracing and screen-based simulators.

Anesthesia Simulator Consultant and Rhythmn PULSE by Howard Schwid is now available from the new Anesoft web site.

AnesthesiaGUIDE is a commercial card-based informative data set for anaesthetists.

The ACCRI has a software listing. See also the anesthesia simulation area above.



Medical News and Information Services

ABC Aust Radio National Health Report - topical health issues
Anaesthesia Web - topical info from Yale/Roche (free registration, many images)
CNN Health News
Newsrounds Reuters Clinical Medicine News Updates
Quackwatch
Reuters Health News - subscription required for full access
HealthNews - (subscription required) medical abstract news service
HealthWorks - free - UK based health briefs
Medical Matrix - Gary Malet's often updated lists of new internet medical resources
Hardin's What's New - free health information listings
PharmInfoNet is a good drug info resource with a 'news' page on anaesthetic and analgesic agents.



Medline

Free Medline Access:
Very comprehensive listings are available at Dr. Felix's Free Medline Page and at the Medical Matrix site. There's also an OMNI site that has in-depth reviews of the MEDLINE services.

Medscape - Free Medline abstract services (you have to register, at no cost, first) with an excellent boolean search engine to 1966. Selected full-text articles are also available.
NLM 'PubMed' - Very up to date free medline from the National Library of Medicine in the USA.
BioMedNet's Evaluated MEDLINE - excellent - one time free registration - now includes full document delivery services. Interesting articles in the free on-line journal also.
Helix, sponsored by Glaxo Education, provides free Medline (after registration), and other services
The Community of Science Medline database at Muscat - probably the best, great interface, MESH searches possible; free.
Avicenna - The "Medical Information Supersite" Requires registration (no cost); other services available.
HealthGate - Free Medline abstracts, full Medline and other reference information services by subscription. Advanced Medline search interface.
HealthWorld - Free Medline abstracts, search supports basic boolean terms.
NlightN - Free access to almost any database set imaginable, including Medline, news sources, books, magazines etc, free abstracts and subscription based full text retrieval services. Lacks a formal Medline search interface but well worth a look - the depth of information is amazing. Fee based full text retrievals available for those with large wallets!

NLM Medline can be searched usinge-mail. Send messages to query@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in this format:

Example of text required in body of e-mail:
Explanation (not to be sent):

DB m

query the MEDLINE database

TERM hypertension [mesh] AND diuretics [mesh]

your query

DISPMAX 10

number of results to return


Your query can be more complex. For a help file, put 'help' in the body of a message to query@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or get the full manual by ftp (364kb zip archive).

Subscription-only Services
The US National Library of Medicine's 'Internet Grateful Med' - Medline by subscription to US and non-US applicants; moderate charges.
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/mailnews/em_ai40.zip Knowledge Finder - net accessible Medline with a free text fuzzy logic interface which, for quick queries, really works. Free 30 day assessment period, then subscription.
Silver Platter - subscription-only Medline and other reference information.
PaperChase is similar.
Ovid Technologies - net-accessible subscription-only (monthly fee) Medline (1966 to present).
HCN (using Ovid) offer subscription-only Medline access to Australian residents at very reasonable prices.

Many Universities and hospitals provide Medline access to their employees; check first.



Internet Applications and related software

Citeline is an excellent new medical search tool with customised Medline searching. The Medical World search engine is similar. AltaVista, Lycos and Savvy Search are good for general internet searching.

Eudora from QualComm is, in my opinion, the E-mail reader of choice on Mac or PC, and most pages these days are built with Netscape or MicroSoft's Internet Explorer in mind. Plug-in enhancements for Netscape are becoming more sophisticated, have a look at the BrowserWatch listing of plug-ins for Mac and PC.

If you want to write your own Web pages, I strongly suggest using a dedicated wysiwyg html program. By far the best for beginners, in my opinion, is the Filemaker application called HomePage (around $US100, Mac, NT or Windows). Fully functional demo versions that last one month can be downloaded. You get an easy to use application, full 'what-you-see is what you get' capabilities, easy formatting and links; also tables, frames, clickable server-side maps, inbuilt updating to servers, etc etc. MicroSoft's FrontPage is easily obtained but not as easy to use. Many html editors exist, ranging from simple shareware to expensive professional site management applications - this page about html editors may be of some help in choosing what's best for you.

Before you write any pages have a look at the Yale Style Manual and review Health on the Net.

Link checking is made easy with Big Brother (Mac) or RxHTML (PC)

Have a look at the Telemedicine Information Exchange for information about videoconferencing and telemedicine issues. Enhanced Cu-SeeMe, from White Pine, is a state of the art internet videoconferencing software suite that can provide colour video reception (with audio and a shared electronic whiteboard) at up to 10fps (with audio) via a 28.8 modem!

MT Newswatcher is my favourite news reader for the Mac. Search this full listing of newsgroups for something of interest.

For Bibliographic software, look at EndNote.

Shareware, demo and free Mac software is best found (and easily downloaded) from the Info-Mac Archives. You will need one of the Stuffit family of products from Aladdin for uncompressing files. I suggest getting John Norstad's Newswatcher (or the later 'YNA Newswatcher) as your news group reader, Fetch for ftp, and either NCSA Telnet or Black Night for telnet applications.



You are visitor number hitcount since mid November 1996.

This page is one chapter of many in the Virtual Anaesthesia Textbook. Please direct all comments about the organization of this chapter, corrections to links, and suggestions for additions to:

Dr. Chris Thompson
MBBS FANZCA
Senior Staff Specialist Anaesthetist
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
Sydney Australia 2050

Comments about the content of any linked page should be addressed to the author of that page, not the Chapter Organiser. Any comments about the organization of the VAT project as a whole should be referred to Chris Thompson.