Cardiac anesthesia as super-specialty: Need of the hour!

Cardiac anesthesia caters to all patients with diseased cardiovascular system who needs special care with advanced monitoring and excellent knowledge of physiologic changes in the perioperative period. However, cardiac anesthesiology has been recently recognized as a super specialty anesthesia branch in India despite its existence since last few decades. Development of cardiac anesthesia and its progress is albeit a short duration but a rapid one. Basically, this picked up a pace in late 90's even though it came into existence during 1950's. Many pioneer cardiac anesthesiologists quote that cardiac anesthesia practice has evolved from the era of finger press monitoring method (to assess capillary perfusion) pulse on hand to non-invasive tissue oxygen monitoring to assess peripheral circulation. It has grown leaps and bound considering newer technological improvement in cardiopulmonary bypass as well as invasive hemodynamic monitoring.