As SARS-CoV-2 spread across the globe early last year, the WHO initiated the “Solidarity Trial” to efficiently see if existing drugs could be repurposed to treat COVID-19. Fifty-two nations are participating in the WHO Solidarity Trial. Unfortunately, the first four drugs evaluated – remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir, and interferon – all had the same outcome: little or no effect on hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

This month, the Ask the Expert column explores a topic with huge implications for the medical field and the planet, namely the environmental impact of perioperative medicine. Everyone is familiar with the concepts of climate change, ozone layer depletion, and the push for sustainability in equipment/device production and utilization. But what do these things really mean to anesthesia professionals and physicians?

Excess mortality is shaped by several drivers of all-cause mortality that correlate to the pandemic and the social distancing directives that came with the pandemic. These drivers include health care being delayed or deferred during the pandemic, racial and socioeconomic inequities, an increase in mental health disorders, increased alcohol use, and increased opioid use.

In this month’s case, a young school-aged child was anesthetized in an adult facility for an unspecified procedure and was expected to be transferred for phase 1 recovery directly from the OR to an adjacent children’s hospital, a trip that was apparently quite a distance away through public corridors (a 12-minute trip could easily be a quarter mile).