Our Services
We provide comprehensive anesthesia services for all aspects of surgery except transplant, as well as acute pain management, and care for critically ill patients in the Surgical and Trauma Intensive Care Units.
Acute Pain/Regional Anesthesia
The Regional Anesthesia and Perioperative Pain Division Medicine Division utilizes state-of-the-art techniques to ensure patient comfort before, during, and after surgery. We employ ultrasound-guided nerve blocks to stop pain signals from traveling to the brain. This greatly decreases the amount of oral or intravenous medications that would otherwise be necessary, thereby minimizing side effect while allowing quicker discharge from the hospital. The nerve blocks can be used as surgical anesthesia with or without moderate sedation (to avoid general anesthesia) and/or for post-operative pain control to provide the highest quality pain relief. For many surgeries, we apply the On-Q pain relief system, which can allow a patient to receive the continuous effects of a nerve block at home with a patient-controlled device. Your anesthesiologist will discuss the nerve block options available to you for your specific surgery.
Pediatric Anesthesia
One of the subspecialties offered at SCVMC is pediatric anesthesiology. This subspecialty is devoted to the care of infants, children and teenagers. Whether it's elective surgery or because of a traumatic accident, we take the additional step to provide our youngest patients with pediatric trained anesthesiologists devoted to their care. A pediatric-trained anesthesiologist cares for all VMC patients 2 years old and under and older children upon request of the surgeon or parent.
Our pediatric anesthesiologists are knowledgeable in the care of premature infants with congenital anomalies and illnesses. They are experienced in treatment of the normal, healthy child as well, and have a thorough understanding of the physiology and psychology unique to children. Our staff works to ensure a stress-free environment for our smallest patients and to provide the best possible pain control during their visit as long or as short as that might be. And equally important, our pediatric anesthesiologists are sensitive to the needs of parents knowing full well that they entrust their children to their care.
Obstetric Anesthesia
The Department of Anesthesia provides analgesia and anesthesia for over 5,000 women delivering at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center each year. The department offers special expertise in obstetric anesthesia including high-risk pregnancy. Anesthesiologists are available for consultation prior to your delivery and epidural analgesia is available 24 hours a day for those patients that might benefit from this means of labor analgesia. We are happy to discuss your options for labor analgesia with you.
Critical Care Anesthesia
The Critical Care trained anesthesiologists provide care for those patients with life-threatening illnesses or traumas requiring intensive care monitoring either in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit or the Trauma Intensive Care Unit.
A comprehensive group of attending physicians from both Anesthesiology, Surgery, and other areas of the medical field direct all care given to patients on this service.
Cardiac Anesthesia
The Fellowship Trained, Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists manage the intricacies of cardiac preoperative evaluation, invasive monitoring, hemodynamic optimization, transesophageal echocardiography, cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology, management of cardiopulmonary bypass, total circulatory arrest, and postoperative care of the patient having cardiac surgery. We have a patient population that tends to be more high risk and complicated, compared to the local community hospitals, and the cardiac anesthesia team at VMC is prepared to provide the best patient care possible.