Objectives: To study precision in American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification by Catalan anesthesiologists.
Methods: An anonymous survey carried out in Catalonia, Spain, asked medical residents, staff anesthesiologists, and chiefs of service to allocate ASA classifications in 10 hypothetical cases that were representative of usual clinicalpractice. Respondents were also asked to state how long they had been practicing. Frequency distributions, medians and interquartile ranges (IQR) were calculated for the scores for each hypothetical case. The differences between residents and staff specialists were assessed.
Results: Three hundred thirty-three responses were obtained: 30.4% from residents, 59.9% from staff anesthesiologists, and 9.7% from chiefs of service. The mean (SD) length of professional practice of the staff specialists was 15.13 (8) years. For 1 case the IQR was 0 points on the ASA scale; in another case it was 3, and in the remaining cases the IQR was 1. Over half of the respondents were unfamiliar with class 6 (organ donor). The responses of residents and staff specialists for 2 cases differed significantly.
Conclusions: The use of the ASA physical status scale is somewhat imprecise. There are small differences between specialists and residents and the current version is not very well known.