Every anesthesiologist is trained to keep you safe and comfortable before, during and after surgery.
As medical technology has evolved, however, many anesthesiologists today subspecialize—providing advanced capabilities to meet your needs both in and outside the operating room.
At Spectrum, our anesthesiologists have acquired extensive subspecialty expertise through additional training and clinical experience—giving you and your family access to an exceptional level of skill and knowledge in these areas:
Acute management
With their specialty training and experience in controlling pain during and after surgery, anesthesiologists are uniquely qualified to prescribe and administer medications or perform special interventions for acute and chronic pain.
Anesthesia for ambulatory surgery
With improved technology and advances in anesthesia and pain management, many less-invasive surgical procedures can now be performed in the ambulatory, or outpatient, setting. Most ambulatory surgery is less complex than procedures requiring hospitalization—but you still receive the same high standard of anesthesia care that you’d receive in the inpatient setting. Your anesthesiologist uses short-acting anesthetics and special techniques to keep you safe and comfortable during your procedure.
Cardiac anesthesia
Many patients with heart disease have health issues that make managing anesthesia during surgery complex. With their substantial experience and training in cardiac anesthesiology, our specialists partner with the top heart centers in Maine, successfully caring for thousands of patients who undergo heart surgery each year.
Critical care services
With their extensive training in pharmacology and resuscitation, anesthesiologists often coordinate the care of patients in the ICU, providing respiratory and cardiovascular support as well as pain management. They also are skilled in airway management, cardiac and pulmonary resuscitation, advanced life support, and pain control in emergency situations, playing an active role in stabilizing and preparing critically ill trauma patients for surgery.
Neurosurgical anesthesia
Spectrum’s neurosurgical anesthesiologists provide advanced anesthesia care for patients with such conditions as brain and spinal tumors, vascular lesions, and functional neurological diseases such as epilepsy and movement disorders.
Obstetrical anesthesia
Obstetrical anesthesiologists manage the care of two patients during childbirth, providing effective pain relief for the mother while ensuring the safety of her unborn baby. This usually involves local anesthetics or pain medication administered via a spinal block or an epidural, inhaled nitrous oxide, or surgical anesthesia during a cesarean section.
Orthopaedic anesthesia
Orthopaedic anesthesia demands expertise in a wide range of techniques because there is such variation in patients’ ages and the type of operations performed. Patients can be newborns with congenital limb deformities, teens with sports-related injuries, adults requiring joint replacement, or individuals of any age with bone cancer.
Pediatric anesthesia
Children aren’t simply small adults. Spectrum’s pediatric anesthesiologists specialize in the unique needs of infants and children, and are trained to use equipment and dosages specifically tailored to these young patients.
Regional nerve block anesthesia
Another area in which Spectrum’s anesthesiologists have advanced expertise is in regional nerve blocks. Nerves carry pain messages from a site of injury—including a surgical site—to the brain. By injecting a local anesthetic near a nerve, those messages can be temporarily blocked, relieving pain.
Regional nerve blocks are often used to provide pain relief after surgical procedures, and are offered as a pain control option during the first day and night following surgery. You may still be given narcotics, if needed, but you’ll likely need less and probably have fewer side effects. And you can still have non-narcotic pain medication.
Vascular/thoracic anesthesia
Vascular and thoracic surgical interventions can range from relatively minor angiograms and dialysis access procedures, to major surgeries such as peripheral arterial bypasses, carotid endarterectomies, or repairs of abdominal or thoracic aortic aneurysms or dissections. All require painstaking anesthetic preparation and management, which Spectrum’s anesthesiologists with this subspecialty training are equipped to provide.
