Clinical Research Division
Capital Anesthesia Partners' Clinical Research Division conducts research that improves anesthesia and gastroenterology outcomes and reduces surgical risk in the outpatient endoscopy setting. To date, we have conducted nine research studies and have published some of our results.
Research Team
Anesthesia practices typically just conduct internal meetings as part of their quality program. Our research activities are very different. All members of the patient care team participate in our quality program. In addition to physician anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists, CAP's integrative quality program includes surgeons, gastroenterologists, registered nurses, technicians, and ASC center directors. Our team is supplemented by statisticians and experts in study design. By including all members of the care team, problems are addressed and solved quickly and efficiently, resulting in a higher level of control of the anesthesia program.
Research Protocols
We engage in research projects that have direct effects on our patient care and the delivery of healthcare services. Our research focuses not only on anesthesia care related factors, but also factors that are important to our surgeon/proceduralist partners and our facilities. We have designed studies to identify and reduce risk associated with airway events that occur during endoscopic procedures. Our results have modified patient care in both our core anesthesia practice as well as our client facilities in other geographic areas.
Please contact us for more information about our research.
ACG 2025 Poster Presentation
For the 2nd time, the American College of Gastroenterology has accepted our poster presentation based on new research we conducted. Our Chief Medical Officer, Steven Saltzman M.D., will be presenting our latest research results along with two of our Capital Digestive Care referring gastroenterologist colleagues: Dominique Howard, MD, FACG and Aamir Ali, MD. Justin Kweit, BSc also contributed as an author. Join us in Phoenix in October to learn more about our integrative anesthesia clinical research.
Published Research
For the 2nd time, Capital Anesthesia Partners successfully submitted a poster presentation at the American College of Gastroenterologists annual conference in Phoenix.
Steven Saltzman, MD, our chief medical officer, was joined by Aamir Ali, MD and Dominique Howard, MD, two of our referring gastroenterologists from Capital Digestive Care, and Justin Kweit, BSc as authors of our clinical research about safely reducing intravenous fluids during GI procedures. The research was conducted due to a national saline shortage - caused by Hurricane Helene in September 2024 - forcing our large, community-based ASCs to reevaluate their approach. This scarcity provided an opportunity to test a more targeted IVF protocol.
Research Findings
Some of our findings include:
- Over 5 months, nearly 5,000 procedures were performed, with more than half of the patients qualified for the restricted IVF protocol.
- Only 3.7% of those patients experienced low blood pressure (hypotension), and just 1.25% needed rescue IV fluids as a result.
- Importantly, there were no serious complications reported.
Published Research
Congratulations to Steven Saltzman, MD, our chief medical officer, and Aamir Ali, MD and Micheal Weinstein, MD (now retired) two of our referring gastroenterologists from Capital Digestive Care, who were selected to present our clinical research about increased risk for adverse respiratory outcomes during "double procedures" at the American College of Gastroenterologists annual conference in San Antonio.
Research FindingsSome of our findings include:
- Patients turned supine (on their back) at any time during an endoscopic procedure were 4.3 times more likely to experience an airway event.
- "Double procedures" (where a Colonoscopy and Upper Endoscopy are performed at the same time) were more than two times as likely to result in an airway event than if either procedure was performed in isolation.
Claim Issue Resolved
Aetna has incorrectly adjudicated some of our claims. These errors have been isolated to procedures conducted at Friendship Heights Endoscopy Center on December 1, 2024 or later. We are working with the carrier to resolve.