The 10th Congress of the Asian Society of Paediatric Anaesthesiologists (ASPA) was held on 14-15 July 2012 at West China Hospital, Sichuan, China. The congress was in conjunction with 2012 Visual Technology in Anesthesiology/ Pain/ Emergency/ Critical Care Medicine with more than 500 delegates represent 5 countries in Asia, and also USA, Canada and Germany. The congress was hosted by Yunxia Zuo, the President elect of ASPA and the leader of Chinese Pediatric Anesthesia group of the Chinese Society of Anesthesiology. The academic activity was remarkably high standard and the key concept of the meeting focused on the application of ultrasonography in anesthesia, pain, emergency and critical care medicine. There was also a simultaneous translation from English to Chinese during the congress.
The congress was begun with Jin Liu (China), the President elect of Chinese Society of Anesthesiology and Ruenreong Leelanukrom (Thailand), the present president of ASPA, for the opening ceremony. The opening lectures, in accordance to the theme of the congress were ‘pulmonary ultrasound’ and ‘transesophageal echocardiography’ by Thomas Cook (USA) and Yonggang Peng (USA), respectively, and then followed by the plenary lectures on ‘the application of sonography in chronic pain management by Sean Lin (Taiwan) and ‘pediatric difficult airway management by Josef Holzki (Germany), the past president of the Federation of the European Associations of Paediatric Anaesthesia (FEAPA). He was a good friend of ASPA and also actively participated and contributed himself to most of our meetings. The lunch meeting was presented by Chinese well-known pediatric anesthesiologists on the topics of “Application of BIS in pediatric anesthesia’ and ‘poblems in pediatric anesthesia monitoring’The afternoon session was the symposium on ‘ventilation and airway’. The first topic was‘physiology of mechanical ventilation in neonates and infants’ by Josef Holzki. Erlinda Oracion (Philippines) shared her experiences on ‘pediatric airway management’ and Tae Kim (USA) on ‘anesthesia management of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery in infants’. The late afternoon session was ‘pharmacology and controversies’ which included ‘PD and PK of anesthetics for children’ by Mazhong Zhang (China), ‘effects of anesthetics on developing heart and brain’ by Yingwei Wang (China), and ‘pros and cons on ketamine’ by Qingquan Lian (China). However these topics are presented in Chinese.
On the second day of the meeting, the seats were still full as the previous day. Some participants had to stand but with attention. Open with four topics on the ‘challenges in pediatric anesthesia’ :‘anesthesia for EXIT surgery’ (ManojKarmakar), ‘malignant hyperthermia and mitochondrial disorders (Tae Kim), ‘pediatric pain management and childkind hospital’ by Allen Finley (Canada) who was formerly the president of Special Interest Group of Pain in Childhood.
The lunch symposium were consecutively by Michael Ramsay (USA) who created Ramsay sedation scale on ‘the brain and breathing, why not monitor both’ and ManojKamakar (Hong Kong) who was the immediate past president of ASPA on his recent workon ‘ultrasonography of the airway’.We all are so impressed that the airway can be visualized by the non-invasive equipment and may be the new paradigm of difficult airway management in the near future. After Chinese tea break, the symposium on ‘fluid, temperature management and emergence’ was conducted: ‘advances in fluid and electrolytes management’ (Josef Holzki), ‘blood transfusion in children’ (Angelina Gapay, Philippines), ‘emergence agitation’, (Norifumi Kuratani, Japan).
To conclude the congress, many workshops were organized: ‘ultrasound guided nerve block’ (David Auyong, USA and Bin Du, China), ‘ultrasound guided paravertebral and neuraxial block (Manoj Karmakar), ‘ultrasound guided vascular cannulation’ (Lee Shu Yin, Singapore and Erli Ma, China), TEE (Yonggang Peng and Haibo Song, China), ‘pediatric resuscitation (Tae Kim and Liqiong Fang, China), difficult airway (Josef Holzki and Peiling Lu (China), Trauma EX-focus examination (Patric Hunt ,USA and Da Zhu, China) and ‘pulmonary ultrasound examination (Thomas Cook and Leng Zhou, China).
The ASPA scientific meeting has graciously been scheduled to be held on a two yearly basis but during this past 5 years there have been the additional meetings in the year between. It seems to be that the ASPA meeting will be held in yearly basis from now on. This demonstrated that our ASPA faculty members of the ASPA were highly active and contributed the effort to create the collaboration on the scientific meeting. There was also a combined meeting of the ASPA and Society for PaediatricAnaesthesia in New Zealand and Australia (SPANZA) in Queenstown, New Zealand, on 2-5 September, 2010.
The social event of the congress was extremely exotic. The atmosphere was friendly by the overwhelming hospitality from the Chinese anesthesiologists. All delegates are filled up with the unique Sichuan cuisine, hot and spicy, resulting from the liberal use of chilies and the indigenous ‘Sichuan pepper’ which can anesthetize your tongue if you are not careful. Also, all cannot forget the Chengdu-style Sichuan ‘HOT pot’ with lots and lots of heat created from chili oil. In addition, Allen Finley kindly demonstrated us the ‘porcine brain’ dish. During the dinner party, everyone was puzzled with the Sichuan opera show. The highlight was the magical face changes that the actors can change their mask within seconds, just by raising the hand or swinging a sleeve without any clue.
Asian countries still have a shortage of anesthesiologists. Anesthesia was provided by both physician and non-physician anesthesia providers, Moreover, many of them provided occasional anesthesia to children. For this reason, this year we will also have another activity, ‘ASPA safe anaesthesia for children workshop’, on 18 August, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore. This ‘train the trainers’ workshop came to success by the devotion and contribution of our founding president, Agnes Ag. The objectives are to form a pool of the trainer who can conduct this workshop for the anesthesia providers who have limited experiences in pediatric anesthesia.
Ruenreong Leelanukrom finished his term as the president of ASPA, and YunxiaZuo will be the next president on September, 2012.
The venue of the next ASPA meeting was planned for 19-21 February 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia. For further information, visit our website http://www.aspa2000.com or Secretariat (jakartaaspa2013@yahoo.com) , Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia, Cipto Mangunkusumo National General Hospital, Diponegoro No. 71 Jakarta 10430, Indonesia
Ruenreong Leelanukrom
President, ASPA
Yunxia Zuo
President elect, ASPA
