The official podcast of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) is hosted by Alli Bechtel, MD, featuring the latest information and news in perioperative and anesthesia patient safety. The APSF podcast is intended for anesthesiologists, anesthetists, clinicians and other professionals with an interest in anesthesiology, and patient safety advocates around the world.
The Anesthesia Patient Safety Podcast delivers the best of the APSF Newsletter and website directly to you, so you can listen on the go! This includes some of the most important COVID-19 information on airway management, ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE), drug information, and elective surgery recommendations.
Don’t forget to check out APSF.org for the show notes that accompany each episode, and email us at podcast@APSF.org with your suggestions for future episodes. Visit us at APSF.org/podcast and at @APSForg on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
A “red meat allergy” sounds like a dietary footnote until it becomes a medication and device safety problem in the operating room. Alpha-gal syndrome is an IgE-mediated allergy to a carbohydrate found in non-primate mammalian tissues, and its delayed, inconsistent reactions can make it hard to recognize and even harder to manage under anesthesia. We sit down with cardiac anesthesiologist Dr. Maziar Nurian to translate what this diagnosis means for real perioperative care, from the preop interview to the PACU and beyond.
We walk through the practical signals that should raise suspicion, including long allergy lists that do not quite add up, nighttime symptoms after beef or pork, and prior unexplained reactions. Then we map the hidden exposure pathways that matter most to anesthesia teams: inactive ingredients that vary by manufacturer, gelatin-based surgical hemostatic products, biologics, and the big one for cardiac surgery, high-dose unfractionated heparin. You will hear how we think about risk without assuming heparin is automatically off-limits, why multidisciplinary planning changes outcomes, and what it looks like to be prepared for anaphylaxis when the usual skin clues may be covered.
We also get hands-on with tools and workflow. Dr. Nurian explains how to start screening exact formulations, why a single “safe list” is not realistic, and how an “alpha-gal safe bag” can reduce cognitive load and prevent accidental substitutions during handoffs. If you care about anesthesia patient safety, perioperative protocols, medication safety, and tick-borne allergies, this is a must-listen. Subscribe, share with your OR team, and leave a review so more clinicians can find these alpha-gal syndrome perioperative safety strategies.
For show notes & transcript, visit our episode page at apsf.org: https://www.apsf.org/podcast/332-alpha-gal-syndrome-what-every-anesthesia-professional-needs-to-know/
© 2026, The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation
