This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Drummond Rennie, MD

JAMA. 1989;261(9):1277.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply. —

Dr Smith is correct.

Back in October 1977, in the article by Goldman et al published in the New England Journal of Medicine, ASA was translated to American Surgical Association.¹ The error was pointed out by four members of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in a brief poem,² which ended with this moving anesthetic couplet:

To us belongs the classification of risks involved in operation.

This assertion was clouded by a letter from Felts and Owens,³ who pointed out that the classification of the American Society of Anesthesiologists was never intended to include the variable "operative risk." Dr Goldman did indeed apologize,⁴ noting that the switch from ASA to American Surgical Association had been made by the editors and that whatever the founders' intentions, he and other authors had used the classification to estimate operative risk.

In February 1985, JAMA, until then blameless, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?