Anaesthesia (Canada) Question Verification Form

The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Canadian Anesthesia Research Priority Setting Partnership

Please describe the scope of the PSP

The scope of the Canadian Anesthesia Research PSP covers aspects of care during anesthesia and the perioperative period, and the management of longer-term problems that have their origin during this period. Hence, chronic pain is not considered unless the pain originates around the time of anesthesia.

Inclusion criteria: The scope includes all the work conducted by anesthesiologists, including obstetric and resuscitation care, and that conducted by the wider perioperative team and the care pathway from initial intention to treat/operate onwards. “Onwards” is an open-ended word signifying that long-term problems attributable to this surgery/intervention and management period must also be considered. The perioperative period spans the time from when a decision is made to have surgery or anesthesia care to the time that the patient has 1) returned to preoperative function or has 2) fully recovered from having surgery or 3) recovered to a stable functional level with care transferred back to primary care provider. There is no age limit to the criteria and we actively encourage consideration of, and representation from, more vulnerable populations such as newborns, young children, the elderly and disabled.

Exclusion criteria: As this priority setting partnership has its focus on “perioperative care”, we exclude commentary on surgery itself or its management (e.g. of pain). We focus on the management of patients’ physical wellbeing throughout all anesthetic procedures and its impact on recovery thereafter. We acknowledge that many anesthesiologists provide Critical Care, but do not include this subspecialty area in this PSP.

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

This PSP has a broad scope, but we had a short timeframe available for conducting the evidence synthesis. We were quite pragmatic and narrow in checking the evidence. From the Cochrane database, we exported all reviews from the Anesthesia Group. We only included those that were no older than 3 years (i.e. we included those from 2016-2019).

Please list the types of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

Systematic reviews from Cochrane

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

What search terms did you use?

This search used no terms. We exported all reviews by the Anesthesia Group.

Please describe the parameter of the search (eg, time limits, excluded sources, country/lanugage) and the rationale for any limitations

We included only reviews written in English, due to the limitations of our team. We included reviews only from the last 3 years, based on guidance from the JLA.

Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking

Michelle Fiander & Jillian Banfield

On what date was the question verification process completed?

March 11, 2019