Anesthesia-associated mortality has decreased during the last three decades as a result of several measures undertaken to improve patient safety. These included analysis of critical incidents and errors that occurred during the anesthesia, as well as factors that contribute to such incidents. Such factors may be related to the patient, operation or anesthesia. According to our study the most common incidents were related to the respiratory system: difficult airway, reintubation, oxygen desaturation; cardiovascular system: hypotension, tachycardia, bradycardia, hypertension, collapse; massive hemorrhage.
Anesthetic emergencies occur rather often in Ukraine and impact the treatment results significantly. Notification, registration and analysis of such incidents are not being performed systematically, which proves to be one of the major threats to patient safety during anesthesia.