First, an apology for the long delay since my last post. As many of you may know, my family has recently been struggling with serious medical issues that required my undivided attention. Fortunately, things have improved and I can now work on the website again. Meanwhile, the site has continued to grow and grow......

Hits: We experienced a very significant and sustained increase in the number 'unique' daily hits to lipidrescue.org. The first year after launch we had leveled off at approximately 60 different visitors per week day and 1000 visitors per month was typical. However, since Dr. Rowlingson's favorable review in the ASA Newsletter this past November, we regularly receive more than 300 hits per day from all over the world (yes, I know where you're coming from!) and occasionally more than 500 per day. Of these, 75% are new visitors and this number has been constant for the past two years. This is very heartening. Since we focus on education, I am particularly gratified to note that the second-most visited page (after 'Welcome') is 'Learning Links'. Fortunately, we'll soon see several significant additions to this page as well...(see Publications, below).

Youtube Posts: The two current strip charts of BP and ECG that I posted almost two years ago are admittedly getting a bit old, particularly since we have on hand so many high quality examples of instructive experiments. Last week I worked with Luke Edelman, our in-house video-editor and all-purpose incredible dude, to put together three more videos we've posted to Youtube. The original two were examples of lipid given either early (soon after the bupivacaine) or late (ie, a control that we chose to treat after collecting all required data, ~10 minutes after bupivacaine challenge...). The newest features include: a control experiment (no treatment other than chest compressionss and ventilation); saline (volume control); and lipid; all experiments are conducted on rats under  general anesthesia. Luke has also recently done voice-overs to replace the corny and annoying titles - & will post those soon. Let us know what you think.  

Publications:  As I suggested above, there will soon be a deluge of LipidRescue articles. The May issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia will focus on the topic with three editorials and four impressive case reports plus several articles on topics related to local anesthetic toxicity. I give credit to the Editor-in-Chief, Steve Shafer, for his tenacity and hard work - both required to pull all this together and no small feat at that. I believe the pay off is big: this issue will help raise awareness and thereby save lives in the process. The May issue of Anesthesiology will include a laboratory investigation comparing lipid to epinephrine in a rodent model of bupivacaine overdose. I am particularly proud of this work, the product of several years' work and a collaboration among so many talented people. Meanwhile, other manuscripts have been submitted and I'll preview them here once we receive word of their acceptance for publication.

Presentations: This has been a very busy year for LipidRescue. Our lab was represented at a number of scientific and clinical meetings, including the 2007 Spring ASRA and Annual ASA. Dr. Guido Di Gregorio also presented at NYSORA in December and gave a poster at the Critical Care Society meeting in February in Honolulu (tough assignment, Guido). Dr. Verna Baughman presented another poster on LipidRescue at the IARS in SF and Dr. Chad Kessler gave another poster at the International College of Emergency Medicine, also in SF. In a few weeks,  the findings of the ASRA Working Group on LA Toxicity will be presented and discussed at the Spring ASRA meeting in Cancun. All this is well and good, but my children are most impressed with the invitation to give a talk at the upcoming ASPCA Poison Control meeting; nothing rates like saving a puppy.  Finally, we've recently received confirmation of the acceptance of two sessions on lipid therapy for the upcoming Annual ASA meeting....more on those later.