TopMedTalk

At this year's Euroanaesthesia meeting in Rotterdam, TopMedTalk host Andy Cumpsty interviews Wolfgang Buhre, Professor of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Utrecht University Medical Center and past president of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC).
The discussion starts with a focus upon the annual ESAIC congress and its international reach, with next year's meeting planned for Copenhagen. Buhre explains ESAIC's White Paper, developed over two years using interviews and desk research with clinicians, stakeholders, and patient perspectives, to clarify the role of anesthesiologists and communicate core values and strategic goals for 2026. Key priorities include addressing workforce shortages and Europe-wide variation in training and working conditions, protecting patient safety, ensuring availability of critical medicines and supplies, and expanding standardized education tools such as the European Diploma. He outlines next steps focused on advocacy with European institutions and support for national societies.
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The 2026 International Practicum on Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing will be held at the Balmer Lawn Hotel in Brockenhurst, UK, from September 16th to 18th this year. It is organised by iPOETTS , the international perioperative testing and training society.
Come and join us at this premier educational event designed for clinicians, scientists, and healthcare professionals interested in sport, exercise, and perioperative medicine.
This is an International Perioperative Testing and Training Society accredited event so when you attend you can get your iPOETTS accreditation, showing that you are a practitioner who has reached a high, standardized level of competence in performing and interpreting Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPET) for patients preparing for major surgery.
Go now to http://www.ebpom.org

Andy Cumpstey and Mike Grocott interview Kate Leslie about the SNaPP study (Sugammadex, Neostigmine, and Postoperative Pulmonary Complications). SNaPP is a pragmatic randomized study run from the University of Melbourne with the ANZCA Clinical Trials Network across 45 sites in Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Patients aged 40+ having major abdominal or thoracic surgery (≥2 hours, overnight stay) were randomized after induction to reversal with sugammadex or neostigmine, with anesthetists unblinded and encouraged to use quantitative neuromuscular monitoring. In this podcast Andy, Mike and Kate discuss the results and their implications for anaesthetists and healthcare systems.
Find the paper here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(26)00158-X/fulltext
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Join us at Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) World Congress 2026 in London.
Be part of a global conversation as clinicians from around the world gather between 7-9th July at the British Library in London. Three days of evidence-based perioperative medicine, global insights, and expert debate—featuring speakers including Michael Marmot and Ken Rockwood.
Register here -
https://ebpom.org/product/ebpom-world-congress-2026/

At the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) held in Auckland, New Zealand, Kate Leslie and Andy Cumpstey interview the annual scientific meeting convenor Kerry Benson-Cooper and conference cultural advisor Tui Blair about planning the meeting and how Māori traditions and culture have informed not only the conference but also patient care and education in New Zealand.
Dr Kerry Benson-Cooper is a specialist anaesthetist and intensive care physician at Te Toka Tumai Auckland Hospital, New Zealand. Tui Blair is interim co director of patient services, Health New Zealand | Te Toka Tumai Auckland, New Zealand.

At the SOAP meeting in Montreal, Desiree Chappell and Monty Mythen interview Dr. Marie Louise Meng, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Duke University Department of Anesthesiology and her former cardio-obstetric fellow Liliane Ernst, assistant professor in the Obstetric and Gynecologic Anesthesia section Wake Forest University.
The conversation focuses on cardio-obstetric anesthesia, hemodynamics, monitoring, and patient-centered care.
Meng describes building multidisciplinary "pregnancy heart teams" to plan management for complex cardiac disease in pregnancy and reduce birth trauma. Ernst discusses research using the Premier database on preexisting atrial fibrillation in pregnancy (about 25 per 100,000 deliveries) and associated management and outcomes.
They review cases including mechanical circulatory support with an Impella to prolong pregnancy and highlight knowledge gaps about placental perfusion and pulsatility, including Fontan physiology. Meng outlines individualized hemodynamic monitoring for labor and C-sections, emphasizes recognizing hypertensive instability, and details preeclampsia with severe features, its end-organ criteria, incidence, disparities, postpartum follow-up challenges, and potential use of remote monitoring and noninvasive cardiac output/SVR monitoring to guide therapy.
Monty Mythen, founding editor-in-chief of TopMedTalk, is now Senior Vice President, Scientific Liaison, BD Advanced Patient Monitoring. He is also Emeritus Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, University College London, UK.
Desirée Chappell, former co-editor-in-chief of TopMedTalk, is now Director of Medical Affairs and Medical Science Liaison, BD Advanced Patient Monitoring. She is also a CRNA at NorthStar Anesthesia, USA.
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Join us at Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) World Congress 2026 in London.
Be part of a global conversation as clinicians from around the world gather between 7-9th July at the British Library in London. Three days of evidence-based perioperative medicine, global insights, and expert debate—featuring speakers including Michael Marmot and Ken Rockwood.
Register here -
EBPOM World Congress 2026

TopMedTalk introduces our new "TopMedTalk Classics" series with a classic TopMedTalk episode from 2018 that is still prescient today. This lecture, given by Sir Bruce Keogh marked the NHS's 70th birthday, a time framed by political volatility, financial constraint, rising demand, and shifting public expectations.
Keogh argues healthcare systems must adapt, highlighting the UK's strengths in medical science, innovation, life sciences, and the scale and complexity of the NHS. He describes quality improvement efforts since 2008, including defining quality as effectiveness, safety, and patient experience, developing outcomes measures, and using aligned clinical and managerial leadership to drive change.
Examples include major reductions in MRSA, rapid increases in VTE assessment, improved survival from major trauma networks, better hip-fracture care, strong heart-attack and sepsis performance, stroke centralization benefits, and increased dementia diagnosis for support. He emphasizes future pressures from ageing, prevention, the health–social care split, Brexit workforce and drug costs, and emerging forces like mobile tech, AI, genomics, and gene therapy, arguing the NHS's pooled, universal model is well suited to a genomics-enabled future.
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Join us at Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) World Congress 2026 in London.
Be part of a global conversation as clinicians from around the world gather between 7-9th July at the British Library in London. Three days of evidence-based perioperative medicine, global insights, and expert debate—featuring speakers including Michael Marmot and Ken Rockwood.
Register here -
https://ebpom.org/product/ebpom-world-congress-2026/
00:00 TopMed Talk Intro
00:18 Classics Episode Setup
01:31 Introducing Sir Bruce
02:23 Politics And Adaptation
04:41 Global Pressures On Healthcare
05:48 Hard Times Build NHS
07:35 UK Innovation Advantage
10:33 NHS Scale And Complexity
12:27 Darzi Review Quality Drive
16:10 Outcomes Framework Explained
17:20 Safety And High Level Metrics
18:09 MRSA Turnaround Lesson
20:11 Mandating VTE Prevention
22:58 Trauma Networks Results
24:08 Hip Fracture Best Practice
25:21 Heart Attack Care Wins
26:17 Sepsis And Early Warning
28:01 Stroke Centralization Success
28:45 Dementia Targets Debate
30:31 Leadership And Brexit Risks
32:35 Health And Social Care Split
36:01 Tech Disruption Ahead
36:49 Genomics And NHS Values
38:00 Closing And Congress Promo