A Guide to Understanding 'State-of-the-Art' Basic Research Techniques in Anesthesiology

Perioperative medicine is changing from a “protocol”-based approach to a progressively personalized care model. New molecular techniques and comprehensive perioperative medical records allow for detection of patient-specific phenotypes that may better explain, or even predict, a patient’s response to perioperative stress and anesthetic care. Basic science technology has significantly evolved in recent years with the advent of powerful approaches that have translational relevance. It is incumbent on us as a primarily clinical specialty to have an in-depth understanding of rapidly evolving underlying basic science techniques in order to incorporate such approaches into our own research, critically interpret the literature and improve future anesthesia patient care. This review focuses on three important and most likely practice-changing basic science techniques: next generation sequencing (NGS), clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) modulations, and inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). Each technique will be described, potential advantages and limitations discussed, open questions and challenges addressed, and future developments outlined. We hope to provide insight for practicing physicians when confronted with basic science manuscripts and encourage investigators to apply “state-of-the-art” technology to their future experiments.