Visiting Professor Exchange: Acute and Perioperative Care in Spaceflight: The Anesthesiologist’s Next Frontier

Arthur Formanek, MD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine
Monday, April 25, 2022
10 AM EST

Objectives

Understand the basic physiologic changes induced by microgravity and principles of space medicine.
Identify the challenges and concerns of perioperative and acute care in spaceflight.
Recognize why there is an increased need for research into perioperative and acute care of astronauts and how it will benefit terrestrial care of patients.

Arthur Formanek, MD is an Instructor of Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School and staff anesthesiologist and intensive care physician in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He completed anesthesiology residency at the University of Maryland followed by ICU and Thoracic Anesthesiology fellowships at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He currently specializes in neuroanesthesia and thoracic surgery anesthesia and attends in the Thoracic Surgery ICU.

His research interests include regional anesthesia techniques for neurosurgery, ventilation strategies, and aerospace medicine and its corollaries with anesthesiology. He is currently developing an IV air trap designed to work in microgravity that will allow rapid transfusion in spaceflight and austere environments. Also, he is a Co-founder and current Secretary of the Space Surgery Association subgroup of the Aerospace Medical Association. He is also a Major in the US Civil Air Patrol.