Anesthesia Off the Grid: A manual for humanitarian health care workers

Expert use of anesthesia is possible without oxygen, electricity, or high-tech monitoring devices. Based on actual practice in the developing world, this manual is dedicated to the physicians and patients who work and live beyond the reach of modern technology. It presents step-by-step real-world techniques for general practitioners, mission doctors, medics, and humanitarian health care workers.

Examples of the techniques contained in this manual include spinal anesthesia with "heavy" lidocaine; ketamine by infusion, IM injection, or IV bolus injection; use of local anesthesia for major procedures (including caesarian section); and use of succinylcholine infusions for procedures requiring paralysis.

The author worked extensively as a volunteer general practitioner in the developing world. The techniques described are in widespread use in district and mission hospitals throughout the Third World and are generally not taught or used by anesthetists or anesthesiologists in the West.

The manual's digital format and low pricing is purposeful. It was designed to be easy-to-use, searchable, low-weight, and low-cost, so the material contained within it can be widely disseminated to the practitioners who need it the most.