Clinical references for anesthesia providers
Written by a practicing CRNA, cited to primary sources, and honest about where the evidence runs out.
These are the clinician-facing guides. Each one answers a question that comes up in practice and that the usual sources answer badly — either because the guidance changed recently, because a trial is routinely misreported, or because the number everyone quotes has a qualifier attached that gets dropped.
What makes these different from a summary you would find elsewhere
- Every figure is checked against the source before it ships, not copied from a review. Where a paper contradicts itself — and one on this site does — the page says so rather than picking the convenient number.
- Where the evidence does not support a conclusion, that is the conclusion. The cricoid page argues for neither verdict because the trial supports neither.
- Corrections are recorded with their reasoning intact in the clinical sources document, rather than quietly edited away.
Airway and neuromuscular blockade
Rocuronium vs succinylcholinestart here
Succinylcholine gives better intubating conditions — except at the dose rocuronium is actually given for RSI, where the difference disappears.
Cricoid pressure
The IRIS trial is misreported in both directions — it did not show cricoid pressure works, and it did not show it doesn’t. Plus where the esophagus actually is.
Video vs direct laryngoscopy
A 14-point absolute improvement in first-attempt success, stopped early for efficacy — and the population caveat that decides whether it applies to you.
Sugammadex dosing
The dose is the easy part. The re-dosing intervals, actual body weight, and the contraceptive counseling that has to happen before discharge.
Pediatric airway sizing
The best landmark is correct under half the time, the formulas name sizes that do not exist, and the depth rule has a trap in it.
Myasthenia Gravis
Inverted relaxant responses, why avoiding relaxants outperforms reversing them, and how badly the Leventhal score actually performs on validation.
Local anesthetic and sedation safety
Local anesthetic maximum dosesstart here
Every agent, plain and with epinephrine, mg/kg and absolute cap, each cited to its package insert — plus the liposomal bupivacaine rules that cause LAST, and the lipid doses for when it happens.
Methemoglobinemia
The saturation gap, why the pulse oximeter sticks near 85%, methylene blue dosing, and the G6PD problem that makes the antidote fail.
TEE anesthesia
Why a diagnostic TEE is a harder sedation assignment than its scheduling suggests: deep enough to tolerate the probe, awake enough to protect the airway.
Hemodynamics
Spinal anesthesia in the elderlystart here
Why the technique choice is individualized rather than settled, and what actually decides it — anticoagulation timing and hypotension in the volume-depleted.
Ondansetron and spinal hypotension
The Bezold–Jarisch mechanism, what thirteen randomized trials actually showed, and why it supplements a vasopressor rather than replacing one.
Vasopressor equivalents
Norepinephrine equivalence is a research convention, not a pharmacologic fact — and phenylephrine’s factor varies fifteen-fold across the trials.
CABG anesthesia
On-pump bypass as three transitions with an interval between them — and the pre-bypass window where the disease is present and the fix is not yet.
Also here
Three further clusters are written primarily for patients — hypermobility and dysautonomia, medications before surgery, and contraindication myths — and are indexed on the patient-facing hub. They are worth knowing about clinically: the Ehlers-Danlos page carries the 2026 randomized evidence on local anesthetic resistance, and the medications pages cover guidance that reversed recently enough that pre-op instruction sheets have not all caught up.
Disclaimer. Reference information for licensed clinicians and students. Not a medical device, and not a substitute for clinical judgment. Verify against your institutional protocol and current package inserts.
Everything indexed here is drawn from the same reference content that ships inside Helix Anesthesia.
Built for the anesthesia machine, not the desk. It opens in one tap, works with no signal in an OR that has none, and shows the citation on screen beside the number rather than making you go and find it.
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Get Helix Anesthesia How we source it← What to tell your anesthesia provider before surgery — the plain-language index of these guides. · How we source clinical content · All clinical answers