Did Dr. Robert S. Kramer Conduct the First Surgical Anesthetic of the Twenty-first Century?

After American Robert Scott Kramer, M.D. (b. 1956), of Concord, New Hampshire, signed up for a 3-month stint oflocum tenens work in New Zealand, he began working in Invercargill (M āori:Waih ōpai), a town at the southern tip of South Island, New Zealand. Situated just west of the International Date Line, New Zealand was preparing to become the world ’s first industrialized nation to celebrate the arrival of Year 2000. As a non-Kiwi anesthesiologist and the low man on the totem pole (Māori:pou whenua), 43-yr-old Kramer found himself covering emergencies at Southland Hospital (above, Dr. Kramer ’s identification card) late into New Year’s Eve on December 31, 1999. After the operating room staff had finished counting down to the arrival of the New Millennium, just as Saturday began on January 1, 2000, Dr. Kramer commenced his rapid-sequence induction of general anesthesia for the emerge ncy appendectomy of a teenaged girl. Was this the first surgical anesthetic of the twenty-first century? (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

Source: Anesthesiology - June 18, 2019 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: research