Background: To survey current anaesthesiology practice in Italy.
Methods: We submitted to 1260 Italian anaesthesiologists in 12 different regional places a structured form aimed at surveying their common work practice. Our sample consisted of anaesthesiologists, age 26-63, with 1-35 years of professional practice. We believe that our sample represents about 7-10% of Italian anaesthesiologists, reflecting a global number of 600,000 procedures performed during 2000. The results have been analyzed by an Excel spreadsheet and they are reported as mean of the percentage of use declared in the case of drugs, and as percentage of the responses in the case of procedure and monitoring systems used. Furthermore we divided our sample population according to two criteria: principal place of work (general operating rooms (OR), subspecialty ORs, ICU) and years of anaesthesiology practice (<5>). The results have been crossmatched within and between the subgroups.
Results: The survey showed a composite state of anaesthesia practice in Italy. The main differences are between the youngest and the oldest anaesthesiologists and between the anaesthesiologists working mainly in the ICU and in the ORs.
Conclusions: Italian anaesthesia practice is still a very composite reality.