Sustainable Anesthesia: Collaborating to Link Quality, Cost Savings, and Environmental Stewardship

On November 18, 2025, the ASA and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) hosted a critical webinar on the impacts of sustainable anesthesia practice. This webinar outlined how sustainability initiatives can generate significant cost savings for health systems, maintain quality anesthesia practice, and reduce environmental impact.

Objectives:

• Sustainability Initiatives: Learn how eliminating desflurane, deactivating central piped nitrous oxide, and using low-flow anesthesia can maintain quality and safety while promoting sustainability.
• Cost-Savings: Discover how strategic changes to anesthetic gas usage could result in significant cost-savings to the health system.
• Making the Case: Understand how anesthesiologists, members of the anesthesia care team, surgeons, and operating room nurses can collaborate to advocate for strategies to make operating rooms more sustainable.

View the Webinar Recording  (member login)

Speakers:

Speakers included leaders from the ASA Committee on Environmental Health.

Shreya Aggarwal, MD, FASA
Anesthesiologist
Baylor St Luke’s, Houston, TX

Praveen Kalra, MBBS, MD, FASA
Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Stanford Medicine
Medical Director of Sustainability, Stanford Health Care

Sandeep Narayan, MD
Anesthesiologist, Scope Anesthesia of North Carolina, Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, Advocate Health
Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the panel presentation. 

Benjamin Miller, MD, FACS
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

Learn More about ASA and Environmental Health:

• Statement on Deactivating Central Piped Nitrous Oxide to Mitigate Avoidable Health Care Pollution
• Statement on the Use of Low Gas Flows for Sevoflurane
• Greening the Operating Room (OR) and Perioperative Arena

For more information, please contact the ASA Department of Quality and Regulatory Affairs at qra@asahq.org.