• Tom G Hansen, Thomas Engelhardt, and Markus Weiss.
• Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care - Paediatric Section, Odense University Hospital.
• Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 2019 Jun 1; 32 (3): 392-397.

Purpose Of ReviewTo review the developments within paediatric anaesthesia and describe the various factors that have contributed to the improvements in anaesthesia-related outcomes in children.Recent FindingsDuring the years substantial improvements in paediatric anaesthesia-related outcomes has derived from safety advances in equipment, drugs, human factor analysis, professional standardization and organization, subspecialty care and regionalization. However, universally agreed outcome measures are lacking.SummaryDespite a steadily and significant improvement in paediatric anaesthesia-related outcomes over the years further and future improvements are still necessary in areas such as adverse-event reporting and long-term neurocognitive outcomes with much more focus on patient/family-centred outcomes. Clinical experts and stakeholders should meet and agree on a consensus to identify indicators that could act as outcome measures in future large-scale prospective observational studies and clinical trials. Such an approach will foster benchmarking and continuous quality assessment and improvement at individual, institutional, interinstitutional, regional, national and international levels and facilitate larger scale clinical research. Furthermore, it will attain a high public health importance and will facilitate comparisons between healthcare provision models leading to optimization of perioperative care delivery.

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