[Documentation and information processing in clinical anesthesia]

Whereas anaesthesia recording was already introduced by Codman and Cushing in 1894 and is now stipulated by law, work registration in anaesthesia and work comparison between departments of anaesthesia have only been built up in the last ten years. Based on the rapid development of computer technology specific solutions were found, ranging from simple software developments to complex on-line monitor systems. The basic data bank published by the German Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Medicine represents a minimum of data, which can be added to at will. We report on our new anaesthesia record and corresponding software with computer supported manual data registration, which was developed at our clinic, taking into account state-of-the-art data processing and quality assurance. A new development, which includes on-line data processing with automatic data registration followed by graphic or numeric data print-out, is now presented by Datex. In combination with manual data input of all parameters of work registration, complete automatic anaesthesia recording can be achieved. The authors report on their first own experience with this system.