Thoracic

I thoroughly enjoyed my month on thoracic anesthesia. I found the cases challenging and diverse, really pushing my technical skills with lung isolation and thoracic epidural catheters and engaging my medical knowledge with complex and ill patients. I've always enjoyed longer tougher cases than many short simple ones. And in thoracic, there isn't much downtime; the surgery itself affects the anesthetic management intimately and so we are always anticipating and responding. Thoracic anesthesia cases are tiring but very satisfying at the end of the day. In practice, there isn't a huge volume of thoracic surgery so anesthesiologists can choose to eschew it from their practice if they choose. And unfortunately, these skills get rusty if they aren't continually honed. I definitely want to keep thoracic anesthesia in my armamentarium as I start looking into what kind of practice I'd like to eventually join.