The 29th Rovenstine lecture: clinical challenges for the anesthesiologist

In conclusion, I hope that my comments have reaffirmed your biases or, even more importantly, stimulated you to think in a different way about the information explosion in our specialty and medicine in general. I believe our specialty is in a golden era that will benefit from the past and be nourished by new discoveries and understanding. We as clinicians must accept the challenge of recognizing what new information deserves incorporation into our practice, what old information deserves to be sustained, and what merits new scrutiny and perhaps should be discarded. If I had one wish, it would be that anesthesiologists would never lose their zeal to be students--their thirst for new information--as the continuum of anesthesia education is indeed a life-long process. That wish, ladies and gentlemen, is my challenge to all anesthesiologists.