The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland has just sent all its members guidelines for the treatment of severe systemic local anesthetic toxicity. A laminated copy of these newly established, official guidelines was  sent to each of the roughly 10,000 members of the organization. This is groundbreaking in that there has never been a well-defined consensus for treating this life-threatening complication until now. The need for such an approach was brought to public attention by the recent survey of Corcoran et al from Wake Forest, and published this year in Anesthesia and Analgesia. They found that among respondant American academic Anesthesia departments that there was no agreement on an approach to treating severe local anesthetic toxicity. Furthermore, the study found a low rate of awareness or, at leat willingness, to consider using lipid in this setting. This may be because the survey was conducted prior to the case of Rosenblatt et al which reported the first use of lipid to save a patient's life following cardiac arrest in the setting of a regional anesthetic (bupivacaine + mepivacaine). Subsequently, several more case reports have been published and awareness is likely to have improved since the survey and the corresponding paper. Nevertheless, there is still a need for general guidelines and a uniform, rational method for treating this problem will significantly improve the liklihood of recovery from or prevent progression to, anesthetic-induced cardiac arrest. The AAGBI guidelines incorporate lipidrescue as a cornerstone of the treatment, refer to this site, reference laboratory investigations on lipidrescue and therefore add to the general acceptance of the technique. Notably, the recent letter of  Picard et al, elaborates on the parallels of this process to that for dantrolene in treatment of MH. The several additional case reports (published and in the literature pipeline) will further validate lipidresuce, and presumably strengthen its acceptance in the medical community. Congratulations to AAGBI. I strongly believe that their forward thinking action will contribute to improved patient safety and hopefully save lives, too.