Leian Maxine Santiago - Anesthesiology

 A Silent Crisis: Health in Inequities in Anesthesiology

Anesthesiology is a complex medical specialty that is focused on pain relief perioperative to surgical operations. Over the years, the field has achieved remarkable progress, including personalized anesthesia, robotic anesthesia systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and many others. Although these breakthroughs are prominent, light is always followed by shadows.


Around five billion people of the global population lack the grants to safe anesthesia to this day, predominantly due to the severe shortage of staff, and insufficient resources and infrastructure, including operating theaters, intensive care units, and equipment maintenance.

A common challenge associated with healthcare professionals includes psychological and emotional factors (e.g., anxiety and burnout), and work overload. Such issues can heighten medical errors and have detrimental effects on patients. 

In addition to that, mainly low- and middle-income countries are prone to inadequate healthcare. This includes poor systems and healthcare provision, to name a few. Many areas face high mortality rates, with fifteen percent being linked to poor-quality healthcare. Sixty percent are attributed to preventable maternal deaths, and fifty-three percent of deaths in children below five years of age are due to inadequate healthcare. 

To conclude, many global healthcare challenges remain. Initiatives and measures would be crucial to manage stress among health workers, as well as to alleviate the risk of lawsuits to ensure quality anesthetic care. Further studies would be significant in addressing technical, ethical, and regulatory challenges and therefore shed light on the continuation of healthcare progress and strengthen safe, quality care for the global population.


Meet the Author

Maxine Santiago is an aspiring physician currently studying in the Philippines as a high school senior in the STEM program. Reading and devouring books in her leisures—if not most of her time, she is committed to curating a life of humanitarian services and saving lives in her pursuit of becoming a force in anesthesiology.

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