About Anästhesiologie up2date

Anästhesiologie up2date

Anästhesiologie up2date is the continuing-education journal for anesthesiology within Thieme's up2date family, published in Stuttgart by the Georg Thieme Verlag. Like its surgical sibling, it appears four times a year and is built entirely around certified training: each issue delivers peer-reviewed CME articles with didactic preparation — summaries, key messages, case examples — organized by a structured curriculum that systematically covers the specialty's full spectrum. Its readers are anesthesiologists in clinics and practices, intensive-care physicians, emergency physicians and pain therapists — the practitioners of the AINS disciplines (Anästhesiologie, Intensivmedizin, Notfallmedizin, Schmerztherapie) who must document continuing education while keeping pace with a specialty where guidelines, drugs and techniques evolve continuously, and where the margin for error is measured in minutes, sometimes in seconds, and always in human lives, every single day.

Overview

Anesthesiology is among medicine's most knowledge-intensive specialties: the anesthesiologist manages the patient's vital functions through surgery, intensive care, emergency medicine and pain therapy, working with potent drugs, complex monitoring and invasive techniques where errors carry immediate consequences. German continuing-education requirements oblige specialists to document their training, and the up2date concept addresses this obligation with a curriculum rather than a collection of articles. The promise is systematic coverage: working through the journal's program over time, readers encounter all relevant areas of anesthesiology — general anesthesia, regional anesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, obstetric anesthesia, intensive care, emergency medicine, pain therapy, transfusion medicine, and the perioperative disciplines — rather than whatever topics happen to arrive.

Each issue's CME articles are certified, peer-reviewed and didactically prepared for retention: clear language, structured presentation, conclusions and memory aids, case examples that translate evidence into decisions. Around this core, the journal provides the practical formats anesthesiologists use daily: standard operating procedures (SOPs) and workflows for quality assurance — from the difficult-airway algorithm to the perioperative management of anticoagulated patients — step-by-step instructions for regional-anesthesia techniques and other procedures, and digests of international studies relevant to practice. SOPs carry particular weight in anesthesia: the specialty's safety record rests on standardized responses to critical incidents — cannot-intubate-cannot-oxygenate scenarios, anaphylaxis, malignant hyperthermia, local-anesthetic systemic toxicity — and the journal's SOP formats give departments evidence-based templates they can adopt and adapt rather than developing in isolation. The subscription model reflects the training function: subscribers pay for the certification infrastructure, the peer review, the curriculum and the digital archive, earning their CME points through the Thieme CME portal.

History

The up2date journals are Thieme's response to the professionalization of medical continuing education in Germany. As CME certification became mandatory and structured in the early 2000s, the publisher developed a family of specialty training journals — each with its own curriculum, each delivering certified CME articles on a regular schedule. Anästhesiologie up2date was launched in the mid-2000s as the anesthesia member of this family, alongside the surgical, gynecological, general-medicine and other up2date titles.

The journal's development mirrors anesthesiology's evolution. Its nearly two decades have seen the specialty's major transformations: the refinement of total intravenous anesthesia and target-controlled infusion, the ultrasound revolution in regional anesthesia — which turned nerve blocks from landmark-based art into image-guided precision — the growing role of point-of-care coagulation management and transfusion algorithms, enhanced-recovery protocols' demands on anesthetic technique, the expansion of intensive-care medicine as a distinct subspecialty with its own training pathways, and the professionalization of pain therapy and palliative-care interfaces. Patient-safety culture — checklists, incident reporting, simulation training — has reshaped the specialty's self-understanding, and the journal's SOP and workflow formats address precisely this dimension. The COVID-19 pandemic put anesthesiologists and intensivists at the center of crisis care, and the journal's curriculum absorbed the lessons: ventilation strategies, ECMO, the organizational challenges of intensive-care surges. Through these changes, the quarterly rhythm and the curriculum structure have remained constant.

Coverage and Content

The journal's coverage follows its curriculum through anesthesiology's full breadth. General anesthesia topics address pharmacology, monitoring, airway management, fluid therapy and the specialty's evolving drug armamentarium. Regional anesthesia — transformed by ultrasound guidance — gets the step-by-step technique coverage the specialty demands: peripheral nerve blocks, neuraxial techniques, fascial-plane blocks, presented with the anatomical and sonoanatomical detail practitioners need. Special populations coverage addresses pediatric anesthesia, obstetric anesthesia, geriatric anesthesia and the anesthetic management of patients with complex comorbidities.

Intensive-care coverage spans ventilation, hemodynamic monitoring, sepsis management, nutrition, delirium prevention and the organizational questions of ICU practice. Emergency-medicine topics address prehospital and in-hospital resuscitation, trauma anesthesia, and the interface between emergency departments and anesthesia services. Pain-therapy coverage covers acute postoperative pain management, chronic-pain concepts, and the interventional techniques within the anesthesiologist's scope. Transfusion medicine, coagulation management, perioperative medicine and patient blood management complete the program — alongside the professional topics: documentation, quality management, legal questions, and the economics of anesthesia services.

The didactic formats deserve emphasis: the CME articles' case examples let readers compare their own patients with the presented cases — "nothing is more memorable than learning from concrete cases," as the up2date marketing puts it — while the SOPs give departments adaptable templates for their quality-management systems, and the step-by-step technique guides serve as the pre-procedure refresher that even experienced anesthesiologists consult before an unfamiliar block.

Organization and Ownership

Anästhesiologie up2date is published by the Georg Thieme Verlag KG in Stuttgart as part of the up2date journal family spanning the medical specialties. The journal's articles are written by clinical experts from German university hospitals and major anesthesia departments — anesthesiologists, intensivists, emergency physicians and pain therapists selected for their authority — and all CME contributions pass through peer review. The professional editorial staff manages curriculum planning, didactic preparation and coordination with the Thieme CME portal.

Commercially, the journal runs on subscriptions: personal and institutional, print with online access, with the training value — certified CME points, the peer-reviewed curriculum, the digital archive, and the SOP library that departments reuse in their quality-management systems — justifying the subscription price. Advertising follows the specialist medical-journal model, with the publisher's media data listing display formats and content services; advertisers include the pharmaceutical companies (anesthetics, analgesics, muscle relaxants, reversal agents), medical-device manufacturers (ventilators, monitors, ultrasound systems, airway equipment) and service providers whose products fill the anesthesiologist's workplace. The Pharmedia sales unit handles advertising from Stuttgart.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital life centers on the Thieme e-journal platform, where subscribers read current issues and access the archive, and the Thieme CME portal, where certification happens: subscribers complete CME questionnaires online, earn their points, and manage their continuing-education record. The eRef knowledge portal integrates the journal's content into Thieme's medical information environment, and the eRef app provides mobile access with offline reading — practical for anesthesiologists consulting an SOP or technique guide before a case.

The connect.thieme.com platform presents the journal's profile and manuscript-submission routes to prospective authors, and the publisher offers free trial issues for prospective subscribers to test the training format — a sensible offer for a product whose value lies in didactic quality, best judged by reading an issue rather than a brochure. After nearly two decades, Anästhesiologie up2date occupies its distinctive niche in German medical publishing alongside its up2date siblings: not a news journal, not a research journal, but a training instrument — the quarterly mechanism by which anesthesiologists keep their knowledge current across the AINS spectrum, their departments' standards aligned, and their certifications complete, in the specialty where current knowledge most directly determines patient safety, every day and every night.