Anaesthesia
-
With the current prevalence of obesity and trends in ethnic diversity amongst parturients in UK maternity units, we performed a prospective, observational study to establish the effect of ethnicity and body mass index on the distance from skin to epidural space in parturients. A total of 1210 parturients participated in this study. The mean (SD) distance from skin to lumbar epidural space was 5.4 (1.1) cm. ⋯ The distance from skin to lumbar epidural space amongst ethnic groups differed at any given body mass index. It was significantly greater in Black/British Black and White parturients compared with their Asian and Chinese counterparts. You can respond to this article at http://www.anaesthesiacorrespondence.com.
-
The h-index is used to evaluate scholarly productivity in academic medicine, but has not been extensively used in anaesthesia. We analysed the publications, citations, citations per publication and h-index from 1996 to date using the Scopus(®) database for 1630 (1120 men, 510 women) for faculty members from 24 randomly selected US academic anaesthesiology departments The median (interquartile range [range]) h-index of US academic anaesthesiologists was 1 [0-5 (0-44)] with 3 [0-18 (0-398)] total publications, 24 [0-187 (0-8515)] total citations, and 5 [0-14 (0-252)] citations per publication. Faculty members in departments with National Institutes of Health funding were more productive than colleagues in departments with little or no government funding. ⋯ Our results suggest that h-index is a reasonable indicator of scholarly productivity in anaesthesia. The results may help comparisons of academic productivity across countries and may be used to assess whether new initiatives designed to reverse recent declines in academic anaesthetic are working. You can respond to this article at http://www.anaesthesiacorrespondence.com.