Patient safety in anaesthesiology

Patient safety is of increasing interest in the public. A relevant reduction of anaesthesia-related morbidity and mortality in the perioperative period has been achieved during the last decade. Anaesthesia-related mortality has been reduced to 0.4/100,000 in patients without systemic comorbidities. But in patients of higher age and those with relevant coexisting diseases the peri-operative anaesthesia-related anaesthesia-related risk still remained distinctly higher. An adequate perioperative anaesthesiological management is able to reduce perioperative morbidity to a relevant extent. In spite of this progress the "Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology" demands further activities to improve the safety of patients. These activities include the implementation of the "surgical safety checklist", labelling of syringes, participation in critical incident reporting systems, and the introduction of standard operating procedures (SOP) for specific aspects in anaesthesia management with respect to patient safety. Additionally, all departments of anaesthesiology are requested to establish an annual morbidity and mortality report to detect specific aspects of patient safety that can be improved.