S3 E18: "Block Box 8: Our convo with Guy Weinberg & Barbara Breebart!"
We're back to Oslo for the ESRA Block Box experience where we interviewed two fascinating and impressive people: Guy Weinberg from Chicago regales us with how a failed experiment led to an incredible antidote, and leaves us with a word of warning about a commonly-used local anesthetic; and Barbara Breebart from Antwerp, explains how we have just SIX seconds to win the confidence of our patients with our body language, and other amazing tips for putting patients at ease.
Join us each month for another sassy conversation about anesthesiology, emergency medicine, critical care, POCUS, pain medicine, ultrasound guided nerve blocks, acute pain, and perioperative care!
Links:
🔗 The article Guy cites about new data on LAST and the danger of lidocaine: https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(25)00493-3/fulltext
🔗 Elvira Lang & Eleanor Laser book on patient rapport: https://www.amazon.com/Patient-Sedation-Without-Medication-Technologists/dp/1461037603
Professor
Dr. Weinberg trained in internal medicine and medical genetics before converting to anesthesiology (a wise move). He also spent time in biochemistry laboratories at UCSF and the NIH before leaving research forever (he thought) vowing never to do another experiment. After nearly fifteen years of clinical practice, an ‘outlier’ event brought him back to the laboratory to answer how carnitine deficiency could lead to severe local anesthetic sensitivity that nearly cost a patient her life. In trying to model this event, Dr. Weinberg identified the benefit of lipid emulsion infusion in treating local anesthetic systemic toxicity. Returning reluctantly to the laboratory, albeit with some measure of success, Dr. Weinberg was lucky enough to preserve 50% of his professional time for the operating room until 2022 when he retired from both the lab and clinical care. His wife Mary and three children claim he manages to stay very busy. He was recognized for his contributions to advancing the safety of regional anesthesia by the European Society of Regional Anesthesia's Carl Koller Award (2019) and by the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine's Distinguished Service Award (2011) and Gaston Labat Award (2020). He gave the Severinghaus Lecture in Translational Medicine at the 2022 ASA Annual meeting.
Dr
Dr. Margaretha Breebaart is an anesthesiologist at the University Hospital Antwerp, specialized in regional anesthesia. At the University of Antwerp, she teaches medical students how to communicate — with a focus on positive and non-verbal communication during invasive procedures, where a calm word or gesture can make all the difference. She has delivered presentations and workshops at national and international congresses, and she runs medical communication workshops for healthcare professionals in Belgium and abroad.
She is a board member of EDRA and currently studies Lifespan Psychology. Her passion is exploring how patients perceive their doctors, and how non-technical skills can turn a good regionalist into a great one. In her workshops she uses improvisational theatre techniques to train communication — proving that while anesthesiologists may be known for putting people to sleep, they can also keep a room very much awake.
In her free time, she performs with several improvisational theatre groups, which keeps her outlook on life playful, flexible, and full of “yes-and.”
