Anaesthetic rooms: current practice in one British health region

In Britain it is traditional that each operating theatre has an adjacent anaesthetic room (1). The implications for equipping current theatre suites and the design of new theatres are wide-ranging. There are no data available on the attitudes of anaesthetists in this country towards the necessity for anaesthetic rooms and the extent of the anaesthetic equipment found in them. This survey in the North West region suggests that all consultant anaesthetists regard the availability of an anaesthetic room as a necessity, and most consider that the current level of vital-signs monitoring equipment in the anaesthetic room is inadequate.