Volume 36 | Issue 1 

I hope everyone has had a decent and safe start to their year. SOCCA has continued to develop as a Society under our new administration team at ARC. We have been adding flesh to the strong bones of the organization. With three standing committees and a host of active committees and subgroups reporting to them, there is a lot of activity along multiple themes.

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The past year was a busy one for SOCCA, and 2024 culminated in the Active Members of SOCCA voting to approve a comprehensive slate of amendments to the Society’s bylaws. The bylaws are an important document defining the operations and governance of the Society. As such, their periodic review and amendment is important to ensure the organization can continue to meet the needs of its membership. Several aspects of the amendments are worthy of emphasis.

The 2025 IARS/SOCCA Annual Meeting is rapidly approaching, and we are excited about the three days of a specific critical care track of educational content. We hope that you are able to join us at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu, Hawaii from March 21-23.

The Service Chiefs’ Advisory Council (SCAC) was born from a desire to unite individuals around the country with the broadest purview over their local anesthesiology critical care practice. In bringing together those one or two individuals from each organization, SCAC facilitates communication, collaboration, networking, and broader insights into the national anesthesiology critical care practice landscape. For SOCCA as a professional organization, it is critically important to have both line of sight into the forces influencing trainees when considering a career in critical care and the downstream issues impacting both individual clinicians in practice and the broader issues impacting our subspecialty. The Program Directors’ Advisory Council is intended to address the former and SCAC the latter.

2025 is off to a busy start for the SOCCA membership committee! Committee members have been hard at work, planning events to accent the standing SOCCA webinars.

As we advance through the current fellowship match cycle, we are reminded that the match process extends beyond simply filling positions; it is about identifying candidates who will uphold and advance our specialty’s enduring legacy of excellence in patient care, research, and education.

As the SOCCA Clinical Practice Committee (CPC) concludes its second year, we take a moment to reflect on the incredible progress we have made. The CPC has fostered collaboration across multiple subspecialties of critical care medicine, an area where we, anesthesia intensivists excel.

Imposter phenomenon (IP) was first described by Drs. Clance and Imes in 1978 in highly successful women who have an “inability to internalize [their] accomplishments” despite evidence to the contrary. Instead, they hold tight to the notion their “successes are fraudulent” and “are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.” (1) Imposter phenomenon (also known as imposter syndrome) is an established entity seen in both men and women and is not uncommon in medicine. In fact, IP is more prevalent among physicians than the general population with a prevalence of 22-60% in medical students and 33-44% in residents. (2) Further, A European survey from 2024 explored IP in Anesthesiology and found high rates of IP in physicians identifying as female and physicians with fewer years of practice.

The evolving landscape of cardiovascular critical care necessitates a multidisciplinary approach to effectively manage the increasing complexity of patient cases. In the June issue of the SOCCA Interchange, Karamchandani and Dave highlighted the expanding roles of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (CCAs) beyond traditional ICU settings1. This discussion underscores the potential contributions of CCAs in optimizing patient outcomes, enhancing team dynamics, and advancing cardiovascular medicine, especially as the distinction between surgical and medical cardiovascular intensive care units (CVICUs) patients becomes less pronounced.

Liver transplantation is a life-saving procedure but comes with significant post-operative risks, including opportunistic infections and immune-mediated complications. In this report, we present two unique cases that highlight the challenges faced in liver transplant recipients. The first case involves a rare and life-threatening gastrointestinal mucormycosis infection, emphasizing the importance of early detection and aggressive management in fungal infections. The second case explores Passenger Lymphocyte Syndrome, an often-overlooked immune complication leading to hemolysis due to minor ABO mismatch. These cases underscore the need for heightened awareness and timely intervention in transplant medicine to improve patient outcomes.