EBPOM London: The National Clinical Audit for Major Elective Surgery
TopMedTalk
At EBPOM 2026 live from the British Library in London, Joff Lacy and Imogen Fecher-Jones speak with Malcolm West and Tim Baker, clinical co-leads for the National Clinical Audit of Perioperative Care (NCAPC), an NHS England mandated and HQIP-funded initiative managed by the Royal College of Anaesthetists to audit major elective surgery in England and publicly funded Jersey. They outline the audit’s denominator (major surgery with anaesthetist involvement and >24-hour stay), year-one focus cohorts (thoracic, major gynaecology, major hip/knee orthopaedics, and lower GI/colorectal surgery),...
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TopMedTalk Classic: Managing Perioperative Risk in Frail Patients
TopMedTalk
This month’s TopMedTalk Classic has been digitally remastered for you and we’ve added the Q&A which wasn’t part of the original podcast. We’re featuring a talk first broadcast in 2018, featuring BobbieJean Sweitzer, Systems Director, Preoperative Medicine, Inova Health, Falls Church, Virginia, and Professor of Medical Education, University of Virginia. BobbieJean discusses whether perioperative risk in frail patients can be managed, emphasizing that current risk tools underweight frailty and functional outcomes. Using cases and data from U.S. nursing home residents, she highlights...
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SMART trial designs, perioperative data ecosystems, and collaboration
TopMedTalk
At the Collaborative Clinical Trials meeting in Prato, Italy, Mike Grocott and co-host Mark Priestley speak with Sachin Kheterpal, University of Michigan Medical School’s Associate Dean for Research Information Technology and the Robert B Sweet Professor and Kelley M. Kidwell, Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs . Kidwell explains sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMART) as multi-stage designs that randomize at key decision points to...
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Perioperative Profile: Dan Sessler
TopMedTalk
In this TopMedTalk perioperative profile, host Andy Cumpstey interviews Professor Dan Sessler, Vice President for Clinical and Outcomes Research and Professor of Anesthesiology and Biostatistics at UTHealth Houston (McGovern Medical School), about his career as a perioperative trialist with over 1,000 publications. Sessler describes his scientific family background, early inspiration from clinical trials through Henry Kaplan’s Hodgkin’s work, and a shift from planned pediatric oncology to anesthesiology. He recounts building a research career starting with perioperative thermoregulation at...
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IARS 2026: Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER)
TopMedTalk
At The International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) and Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA) meeting in Montreal, TopMedTalk hosts Mike Grocott and former editor-in-chief Desiree Chappell speak with FAER board members Dr. Rebecca A. Aslakson, Chair and Professor with Tenure, Department of Anesthesiology, University of Vermont Health Network and Dr. Michael Gropper, Professor and Chair of the UCSF Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, about the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER). We describe how FAER’s early-career support—especially the...
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TopMedTalk AI: AI-Augmented Ultrasound for Regional Anaesthesia
TopMedTalk
In Scotland at St Andrews, TopMedTalk AI hosts Andy Cumpstey and James Bowness discuss AI in regional anaesthesia with Bernard Victor Delvaux, staff anesthesiologist at the Centre Hospitalier Privé Claude Galien in Quincy-sous-Sénart, France. Bowness describes a regional anaesthesia course using AI-augmented ultrasound imaging, augmented reality simulated needling, and cadaveric ultrasound with real needle insertion. Delvaux discusses his research in AI-assisted nerve recognition, explains supervised model development through large-scale ultrasound image annotation for GE Healthcare’s...
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Breaking Trials: ITACS Trial on Preoperative IV Iron for Anaemia Before Cardiac Surgery
TopMedTalk
Recorded at the excellent ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2025 in San Antonio. Hear Andy Cumpstey and Mike Grocott interview Paul Myles, a Professor of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Here we focus upon his group’s approach to large pragmatic, multicenter international trials and the process of selecting and developing study questions within a clinical trials network. Myles presents the ITACS trial (intravenous iron treatment for anaemia before cardiac surgery), designed because anaemia is common (~30%) in elective cardiac surgery and is associated...
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EBPOM London 2026: European Postoperative Care Pathways
TopMedTalk
This presentation was recorded at the Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) 2026 Annual Global Meeting. It features Nicolai Bang-Foss, Consultant, head of GI and orthopaedic anaesthesia, Hvidovre University Hospital, Denmark His main research field is the perioperative care of the elderly emergency patient. Specific areas of research have been regional analgesia, transfusion thresholds, outreach programs and perioperative logistics as well as perioperative haemodynamics. He describes wide European variation in postoperative pathways driven largely by ICU bed capacity, with Scandinavian...
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Breaking Trials: The VITAL trial on TIVA, volatiles and outcome
TopMedTalk
Recorded at the Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) World Congress in London this episode of TopMedTalk sees Andy Cumpstey speaking with a panel of experts about the VITAL trial: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial about volatile vs total intravenous anaesthesia (TIVA) for major non-cardiac surgery in adult patients. The primary outcome was days alive and out of hospital at 30 days. Despite finding no significant differences in the primary outcome, the trial reveals that patients receiving TIVA anesthesia experience better recovery, with less postoperative nausea and other side...
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ANZCA ASM: Emerging Leaders
TopMedTalk
At the ANZCA Annual Scientific Meeting in Auckland, Kate Leslie and Andy Cumpstey discuss ANZCA’s Emerging Leaders Conference (ELC), a retreat-style program held immediately before the ASM for clinicians within five years of achieving FANZCA, with allowances for career disruptions. Their guests, Dr Saana Taylor FANZCA and Dr Vik Singh FANZCA, co-conveners of this year's ELC, describe shaping this year’s New Zealand-hosted ELC with an Aotearoa focus, naming it Te Herenga Matua (“the pursuit of consciousness”) and emphasizing collaboration, communication, wellbeing, compassion, and...
info_outlineThe TopMedTalk team are live from Anesthesiology 2019 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. With over 14,000 delegates, clinicians, thought leaders and professionals, it's the largest gathering of Anesthesiologists and Anesthesia providers in the world.
Check out the www.topmedtalk.com website now to hear live audio, while you are there remember to subscribe for updates so you can always be one step ahead of the crowd. Also, if you fancy watching the show as it happens go to our Twitter feed www.twitter.com/topmedtalk to see the team in action.
Alongside some reflections on the American Society of Anesthesiologists this piece is focused upon a fascinating foundation, Lifebox, the only NGO devoted to safer surgery and anesthesia in low-resource countries.
Find out more here: https://www.lifebox.org
Presented by Desiree Chappell with Sol Aronson and their guest Alexander Hannenberg, M.D. Senior Research Scientist, Ariadne Labs; Principal Consultant, ORDx&Rx Surgical Safety Solutions, 2010 president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists and recently served as its Chief Quality Officer. They are joined also by Kris Torgeson, Global CEO, Lifebox Foundation.