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The SIAARTI Study Group in Animal Anesthesia (Naples, Italy) Issues Strong One Health Endorsement Message: Recommends Applying Comparative Medicine One Health Approach to human and animal anesthesiology

 

One Health, One Medicine, One Anesthesia

 

By *Giancarlo Vesce, DVM and **Edoardo De Robertis, MD, PhD

      SIAARTIVet Study Group coordinators

Provided to One Health Initiative website www.onehealthinitiative.com April 24, 2015

 

“... All of the above beliefs are now shared within the SIAARTI (Società Italiana di Anestesia, Analgesia, Rianimazione e Terapia Intensiva) domain and cultivated by a group of veterinarian [DVM] and physician [MD] anesthetists, whose slogan is One Health, One Medicine, One Anesthesia: the SIAARTIVet Study Group (http://siaartivet.siaarti.it/en/)...”

 

The One Health philosophy encompasses a combination of disciplines joined by the concept that our ecosystem relies on the welfare of animals and plants. By banning an anthropocentric approach, the One Health initiative www.onehealthinitiative.com aligns human medicine, veterinary medicine and agronomics, fostering cooperation with other scientific endeavors, from economics to engineering including the humanities, to achieve global sustainability. Further, the One Health, One Medicine, One Anesthesia paradigm fully embodies the One Health Initiative by promoting an interdisciplinary cooperation between human and veterinary anesthetists.

Anesthesia is a widespread medical practice rendering human and nonhuman animals insensible to pain, which is nowadays used for many other purposes other than just surgical analgesia. Anesthesia is a generic term encompassing several brain statuses ranging from anxiety diminution to sedation and surgical anesthesia, all the way to deep brain depression and death. We don’t know how and where in the brain these states generate from, but we are able to safely produce such a delicate and reversible phenomenon in humans as well in animals of any class and species.  In fact, the same anesthetic drugs produce similar effects in the whole animal kingdom, such as central nervous system (CNS) depression, analgesia, muscle relaxation, loss of reflexes, amnesia, and so on, including exceptions such as with ketamine anesthesia, whose [dissociative] features are observed independent of animal class and species.  Anesthetic induction, progression and emergence, as well as unexplained complications such as anesthetic delirium, happen throughout the animal kingdom with the same features in comparable classes of patients.

Veterinary anesthetists [veterinarians] deal with remarkable animal patients widely ranging in class, species, body mass and physiological variables, whose anesthetic requirements are met by the same drugs that their more specialized physician counterparts and colleagues use in humans.

It is worth noting that, even if overlooked, class, species, breed and individual anesthetic peculiarities do exist. It would probably be rewarding to observe more closely the physiological signs and the CNS response to anesthetic molecules in different species gaining from knowledge and skills of both kinds of anesthetists [physician and veterinarian]. At the same time, an in depth exchange of information on side effects and unwanted drug sequelae in humans and animals would possibly improve the outcome for both professions. Also, under didactic and scientific circumstances such wider knowledge would certainly produce larger benefits compared to present standards.

All of the above beliefs are now shared within the SIAARTI (Società Italiana di Anestesia, Analgesia, Rianimazione e Terapia Intensiva) domain and cultivated by a group of veterinarian [DVM] and physician [MD] anesthetists, whose slogan is One Health, One Medicine, One Anesthesia: the SIAARTIVet Study Group (http://siaartivet.siaarti.it/en/).

More than comparative medicine, such an approach to the One Health Initiative fosters a new philosophy based on cooperation between health professionals in a specific human and veterinary medical clinical field [specialty], in production animals as well as in pets and in free ranging animals: a new tactic to engage broad-minded specialists into a new approach to unsolved basic and clinical phenomena often lacking from simple observation(s) and traditional knowledge.

*Dr. Giancarlo Vesce, a veterinarian, is a full professor of Veterinary Anesthesiology, Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Productions, University of Napoli Federico II Via F. Delpino, 1 80137,  Napoli, Italy. email: gvesce@unina.it Ph. 39 081 2536046 Cell: 39 3382707348. http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/publications/Curriculum%20vitae%20Prof.%20Giancarlo%20Vesce.pdf

**Dr. Edoardo De Robertis, a physician, is associate Professor in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine –University of Napoli Federico II – Italy. Clinical Responsibilities: Adult ICU of the University Hospital Federico II, Napoli, Italy. e_mail: ederober@unina.it Tel.: +39 081 7463550; Fax: +39 081 7464719. http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/publications/De%20Robertis_CV%20eng%20%2008%2014.pdf