ABSTRACT. This article presents results of a search for Anesthesia resources on the Internet. It is useful to faculty, physicians, residents, medical students and librarians in this field. A comprehensive list like this saves time for other researchers. The article sums up the author's experience, provides useful information and makes a few suggestions for more efficient use of the resources available.

This article presents the results of a search for Anesthesia resources on the Internet. Searching information on the Internet is time-consuming. The author would like to share his experience, provide useful information and make a few suggestions for more efficient use of the resources available. It is the author's hope that the information included in this article will be useful to faculty, physicians, residents, medical students and librarians in the field.

Terminology used in search

The terms focused on in my search were: Neurosurgical Anesthesia, Pain Management, Ambulatory Anesthesia, Cardiac Anesthesia, Critical Care Medicine, Obstetric Anesthesia, and Pediatric Anesthesia.

The terms of fellowships and scholarships, professional societies, associations and foundations, and employment were also included.

Search engines used

Four search engines were used (Infoseek, Lycos, Excite, and Yahoo). The first two seem better than the other two.

Search strategy

To achieve better results, one should enter one term first. Then a second term can be entered by clicking on "Search Only Within These Pages." For example, entering OBSTETRIC ANESTHESIA as a phrase in the Infoseek, 34,820 pages were found. When entered them one by one, only 1,052 pages were found. It is more accurate and less time-consuming.

After search

When information is found, the user can place it into a personal list of bookmarks. These bookmarks can be edited and created as a homepage.

Many compnies provide free homepage space. Angelfire Company is one of them. The author has created a page (http://www.angelfire.com/ny/sunyanesthesialib/index.html) at the Angelfire site. On that homepage, I have included the Library of Congress, and SUNY-Health Science Center at Brooklyn.

Medical article index and online catalog can be found on the web. Here are two that are most useful:

Medline
Medline is an index of medical journal articles. Perhaps this is the best medical article database. It is free of charge, and has more than nine million citations. To access it, go to : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed.

National Library of Medicine online catalog
National Library of Medicine online catalog covers medical books and audiovisual materials in that Library. It is a comprehensive medical database, especially useful for those who do not have access to the OCLC database. It provides both MARC and text formats. Its URL is : http://www.nlm.nih.gov. To access it, double click on Locatorplus under Databases and Electronic Information Sources.

To check the availability of books, Amazon Book Company is a useful resource. It lists more than three million titles. Its URL is: http://www.amazon.com.

Neurosurgical Anesthesia

The Society for NeuroAnesthesia and Critical Care.
http://ira-mac.ucsf.edu/snaccweb/AboutSnacc.html
This list provides an on-line bibliography, an annual meeting call for abstracts, the latest SNACC newsletter, a report of the 1997 annual scientific meeting, fellowship survey data, and the "Table of Contents" of the Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesia.

Department of Neurosurgery. New York University.
http://mcns10.med.nyu.edu/intro/whatisneurosurg.html
This is a one-page full-text article written by Richard Kim, MD, MS of NYU Medical Center. He defines Neurosurgery, the difference between a neurologist and a neurosurgeon, and the history and development of neurosurgery.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
http://www.neurosurgery.org
This site divides into professional and public pages. In the five professional pages, there are links to preview the abstracts for the 1998 CNS Annual Meeting, 1998 Research Foundation awardees, the Outcomes Reference Library, the recommended medical student core curriculum in Neurological Surgery, and a directory of Neurosurgeons.

The Department of Neurosurgery. University of Illinois. Chicago, Illinois.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcns
This site lists its faculty, computer-assisted surgery, Neurosurgical critical care, and topics on patients and graduate neurosurgical education.

The Neurosurgery Department of the Neurological Institute. Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. New York.
http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nsg
This site provides an introduction to that Institute, and links to Columbia-Presbyterian Pediatric Neurosurgery homepage, and Neurosurgery Residency page.

The New York University Medical Center, Tisch Hospital.
http://mcns10.med.nyu.edu/research/neuro.anesthesia.html
This site contains a neuroanesthesia quiz, news about neuroanesthesia, effects of anesthesia agents on CBF, effects of vasoactive agents on CBF, Information about the LMA, the neurosurgical airway, and the virtual museum of anesthesiology.

The Boston Neurosurgical Foundation.
http://boston-neurosurg.org
This site describes the Foundation's mission statement, and a directory of faculty. It links to their services, research, education, in press, and amphitheater sections.

The Neurosurgical Service. Massachusetts General Hospital. Harvard Medical School.
http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu
This five-page homepage introduces the MGH Neurosurgery Clinical Units, Brain Tumor Center, Brain Aneurysm and AVM Center, Spine and Peripheral Nerve Surgery Center, Developmental Neurosurgery Center, Neuro-Genetic Surgery Center,Trauma, Emergency, & General Neurosurgery, Functional Neurosurgery Center and NeuroScience Care Center. In Clinical and Educational Resources, it lists attending staff, fellowships, residency program. It also lists recent publications, educational course offerings, neurosurgery grand rounds, a history of neurosurgery, includes resources of interest to patients and families.

Pain Management

Pain Management. Health Care Guide. North Jersey.
http://www.bergen.com/health95/painguid.html
The title of this full-text article is "Toughing it out can slow recovery". It points out the importance of treating pain. It analyses drugs or methods, such as implantable catheters, and acetminophen. It advises the viewer that it is easier to prevent pain than to control it. This page can link to the other subject indexes, and a list of facilities.

Fact Sheet. Health Services Technology Assessment Texts (HSTAT).
http://text.nlm.nih.gov/tempfiles/is/temp46492.html?t=903730250#apmc
This offers a full-text article on acute pain management (clinical guide). The upper level is: http://text.nlm.nih.gov. It can be searched with any medical terms, is linked to MEDLINE records via the Internet Grateful Med and PubMed, HSTAT documents, and U.S. National Library of Medicine. This site is more official.

Pain Management Division. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH).
http://www.aims.unc.edu/dept/faculty/pain.html
This provides a directory of its faculty in the division and Department. It links to its residency brochure, the UNC Anesthesiology main menu (http://www.aims.unc.edu) as well as other divisions, such as, Ambulatory Care, Cardiac and Thoracic, Critical Care, General Anesthesia, Neuroanesthesiology, Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Pre-Anesthetic Evaluation, and Research. The Departmental homepage links to the residency program, fellowships, medical student courses, virtual lectures, faculty publications, and conference information.

Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine. Justus-Liebig-University of GieSSen, Germany.
http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gkbq
This three-page homepage links to thoracic and cardiac anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, regional anesthesia, pain management, anesthesia and the pain, physiology, nursing, intensive care medicine, drugs in anesthesia, ethics in medicine, books and e-journals, etc.

Ambulatory Anesthesia

Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia.
http://www.sambahq.org/samba/documents/intro.html
This provides Society highlights, educational programs, the membership application, membership process information, and lists future annual meetings.

Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care. The University of Chicago.
http://dacc.bsd.uchicago.edu/default.html
This site has quite complete set of links. It contains the Departmental information, such as a directory, clinics and outreach programs, and residents' application. It also provides drug information, anesthesia manuals, case studies, conferences, and professional organizations. It links to the American Academy of Anesthesiologist Assistants, the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Closed Claims Project, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Home Page, the American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Resident Component, the American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses, the International Anesthesia Research Society, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the National Patient Safety Foundation, the New England Society for Critical Care Medicine, the Ophthalmic Anesthesia Society, the Society for Advanced Telecommunications in Anesthesia, the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, the Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia, the Society for Education in Anesthesia, the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology, the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, the Society for Critical Care Medicine, the Society for Technology in Anesthesia, Surginet, the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society, the Canadian Anaesthetist's Society, the Netherlands Society of Anesthesiology, the Slovak Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Medicine. Under U.S. State and Regional Organizations, it lists the New York State Society of Anesthesiologists, the Californian Society of Anesthesiologists, the Michigan Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the North Carolina Society of Anesthesiologists, and the Pennsylvania Society of Anesthesiologists.

Cardiac Anesthesia

The Division of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia. The Anesthesia Department at the New England Medical Center.
http://www.nemc.org/anes/adultcard.htm
This offers a brief introduction to that Division. It links to CA-1 to CA-3. Above this level, it can link to the Anesthesia Department's Pain Management Program, the Anesthesia Residency Program, the Anesthesia Research Program, and the School of Nurse Anesthetist Program at the Tufts University School of Medicine, New England Medical Center.

University of Wisonsin.
http://www.anesthsia.wisc.edu/topics/coexisting-disease/cardiactamponade.html
This is a full-text article written by Brian Launius. The title is "Cardiac Tamponade : Anesthetic MGMT".

Cardiac and Thoracic Division. Anesthesiology Department. UNC-CH.
http://www.aims.unc.edu/dept/faculty/cardiac.html
This is a directory of the Cardiac and Thoracic Division of the Department of Anesthesiology at UNC-CH. It links to other divisions, and the residency brochure.

Heart Surgery Forum.
http://www.hsforum.com/heartsurgery/home.hsf
This is a new on-line cardiothoracic multimedia journal. It provides the Table of Contents of the current issue, and links to forthcoming issue. At the above level, it links to an on-line peer reviewed journal in CT surgery and the internet sites for CT surgery.

Department of Anesthesiology. University of Iowa.
http://www.anesth.uiowa.edu/anesthesia/home.html
This site provides general information on the Department, and it links to drug news, anesthesia calendar, lectures, publications. It offers pain fellowships, and provides electronic residency/fellowship application.

Critical Care Medicine

Department of Neurosurgery. NYU Medical Center.
http://mcns10.med.nyu.edu/residency/critical_care.html
This is a one page full-text article titled "Critical Care Experience," listing personal experiences at New York hospitals, such as Tisch Hospital, Bellevue, and the VA Medical Center. It links to the NYU Neurosurgery homepage.

The National Institute of Health.
http://text.nlm.nih.gov/nih/cdc/www/35.html
This is a Consensus Development Conference Statement in March 1983.

Critical Care Medicine Department. The National Institution of Health.
http://www.cc.gov/cc/about/deptoyr/critical-care.html
This is a brief introduction to that Department.

Critical Care Medicine WWW Sites.
http://rmstewart.uthscsa.edu/criticalcaresites.html
This site provides seven links : the Critical Care Listserv Discussion Group (CCM-L), the SCCM Web Page, the ANZICS Homepage, Anesthesiology and Intensive Care at the University of Queensland, Global Anesthesiology Homepage, WWW Virtual Library-Anesthesiology, and the M.D. Anderson Critical Care Site.

The Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Washington University in St. Louis.
http://pulmonary.wustl.edu
This provides pulmonary information, links to internal medicine and local information.

A Division of Paladin Data Systems, Inc. PDS Healthcare Informatics. http://www.wp.com/pdshealth/emerg.htm
This site links to Critical Care Medicine Periodicals, Emergency Medicine in the news, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, the Global Emergency Medicine Archives, and Pediatric EMS.

Obstetric Anesthesia

The Department of Anesthesia. The New England Medical Center.
http://www.nemc.org/anes/obstetric.htm
This is a brief introduction to obstetric anesthesia in the Department of Anesthesia. It links to the Department and the Center.

Churchill Livingstone Journals.
http://www.healthworks.co.uk/hw/publisher/cu=hurchill/church21.html
This is an advertisement for the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia as well as other fields. It also links to Medline, CD-ROM titles.

The Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.
http://www.anes.ccf.org:8080/soap/index.htm
This is a brief introduction to the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology (SOAP). The upper level is the Anesthesiology Education Center of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. The Clinic offers cardiac anesthesia fellowships. It links anesthesiology multimedia lab manuals and the Society for Education in Anesthesia.

Pediatric Anesthesia

New England Medical Center. Boston.
http://www.nemc.org/anes/pedicardanes.htm
This is a brief introduction to pediatric cardiac anesthesia for residents.

The Nemours Foundation.
http://kidshealth.org/paent/healthy/anesth.html
"Your Child's Anesthesia" is five-page full-text homepage. This is for educational purposes only. It provides a search engine.

Galaxy. CyberGuard Corporation.
http://www.galaxy.com/galaxy/Medicine/Health-Occupations/Medicine/Medical-Specialties/Pediatrics.html
This site provides many links, dividing into academic organizations, articles, books, collections, directories, discussion groups, government organizations, periodicals, product and service descriptions, as well as search engine.

The New England Medical Center. Boston.
http://polaris.nemc.org/anes/pedianes.htm
This one-page pediatric anesthesia homepage is part of the Center's homepage. It can further link to the Floating Hospital for Infants and Children.

Society for Pediatric Anesthesia.
http://www.uams.edu/spa/spa.htm
Besides the Society's information, it links to job postings and other links.Department of Pediatrics.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine. New York.
http://www.mssm.edu/peds/anesthes.html
This is a directory of Division of Pediatric Anesthesia. The upper level is the Department.

Clinical Department. Harvard Medical School. Boston.
http://www.hmcnet.harvard.edu/clinical.html
Besides the directory of the Department of Pediatrics, it also lists other departments, such as Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Anaesthesia, Neurology, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Surgery, etc.

SUNY at Buffalo. Anesthesiology.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/academic/department/medicine/anest/critcare.html
This site lists two one-year fellowship positions. It links to the residency brochure, and the higher level is SUNYAB Anesthesiology homepage.

Scholarship Program. American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses.
http://www.aspan.org/scholar.htm
This site lists two $1000 scholarships for postanesthesia, preanesthesia and ambulatory surgery nurses.

Respiratory Sciences Center, AHSC. Arizona.
http://www.ahsc.arizona.edu/~cbittel/recfellows.html
This site lists the Adult Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowships. Fellowships of three years' duration provide clinical and research experiences.

Stanford University of Medicine. California.
http://www.med.stanford.edu/school/anesthesia/fellowships.html
This five-page homepage offers information on critical care medicine, cardiovascular anesthesia, obstetrical anesthesia, neurosurgical anesthesia, pain management, management of perioperative services, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, neurobiology of anesthesia and analgesia, anesthetics and adrenergic mechanisms, metabolism and toxicity of anesthetics, patient safety and human performance, physical chemistry of anesthetic agents. It links to the Anesthesia, Standford University of Medicine homepage.

American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA).
http://www.asahq.org
This is a good homepage which provides much information, e.g. professional information, continuing education, related organizations, and placement. It links to educational resources, residency programs at home and abroad, other anesthesia societies, publications, anesthesia history, anesthesia software, etc. It also lists to top sites, such as Physicians' Online, Medical Matrix, Anesthesia Web, Anesthesia and Critical Care resources, and the online version of the peer review journal Anesthesiology. On its employment page, it lists twenty-three links. In its mailing lists, it lists nine discussion groups.

SurgiNet Foundation.
http://www.surginet.org/amb/anesth.htm
This site links to the Society for Ambulatory Anesthesia, the Society for Office-Based Anesthesia, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, GASNet, and the virtual anesthesia textbook.

American Medical Association.
http://www.ama-ama-assn.org
This site provides information on JAMA.

American Heart Association.
http:www.amhrt.org
This site links to publications, research, statistics, CME. In family health, it links to nutrition, exercise, programs, and products.

The North Carolina Society of Anesthesiologists.
http://www.ncsocanes.com
This site provides many anesthesiology resources, such as general medical journals, medical search resources, laboratory information, and pharmacology guides.

Dubois Anesthesia Associates.
http://206.150.173/corp/daa
Dubois is a professional anesthesia corporation based in southern Indiana, and it lists services they offer to Midwest anesthesia practices.

Pennsylvania Society of Dentist Anesthesiologists.
http://www.nauticom.net/www/rnassif
Besides its own information, the site links to the American Society of Dentist Anesthesiologists page, and to Pennsylvania Dental Regulations regarding anesthesia.

GasWork.com Agency. JS Medical Professional Placement, Inc.
http://www.gaswork.com/anestmenu.htm
This is a good replacement page. In "Jobs Looking for Anesthesiologist," it links to show all positions, searches for a new position, posting and deleting a posted positions, and updates on a posted job. It also links to "Anesthesiologists Looking for Jobs." Searching was free before September 1, 1998.

Department of Anesthesia. Penn State University.
http://www.anes.hmc.psu.edu/employmentfolder/aeahome.html
This database of monthly positions available can be downloaded. Above this level, it has the Penn State Anesthesia Electronic Case Conference (http://www.anes.hmc.psu.edu/caseconferencefolder/caseconferencetoc.html

The Department of Anesthesiology. The University of Miami.
http://umdas.med.miami.edu/applicant_information/positions.html
This lists positions at UM/Jackson Memorial Medical Center, including Cardiothoracic Anesthesia, Trauma Anesthesia, and Critical Care Fellowships.

Though more and more search engines appear, the Boolean Logic method does not produce precise results as it would with libraries' Online Public Access Catalog. Besides, to access the Internet is time-consuming, even with a good computer. Both search strategies and the computer hardware and Internet connection need to be improved.

Online bookmarks are very useful, and easy to learn. Whenever one finds something valuable, add it to his or her personal bookmarks. They will be useful in the future, and save a lot of time. Using all links in this article, most information on Anesthesiology can be found.