Still No Safety Benefit from Anesthesia in Routine Endoscopy

At least three retrospective studies have demonstrated that sedation administered by anesthesia professionals during routine endoscopic procedures is associated with increased risk for complications, compared with sedation administered by endoscopists, even after adjustment for case complexity. Now, researchers retrospectively examined serious adverse events requiring intervention during endoscopic sedation in nearly 1.4 million procedures in the Clinical Outcomes Research Initiative (CORI) National Endoscopic database from 2002–2013. The study included 880,182 colonoscopies and 508,053 esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs). Anesthesia services were used in 21% of colonoscopies and 23% of EGDs.

In regression analysis adjusted for propensity sc…