Department of Anesthesiology

Welcome from the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Anesthesiology at UT Health San Antonio. As Chair, I could not be more enthusiastic about our future. To meet our missions of teaching, clinical service, research and operational excellence, we are training some of the finest anesthesiologists and anesthetists, providing high-quality, patient-centered care, and creating infrastructure for the future of anesthesia research.

San Antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. and we are building to meet our community’s future health care needs. With full attention to quality and access, our core teaching hospital is consistently ranked as one of the best in the region and achieved a Leapfrog Grade A for safety.

The UT Department of Anesthesiology partners with University Health System, UT Health, and the Long School of Medicine across several dynamic locations to deliver comprehensive anesthesia care in fields such as general practice, transplant, critical care, obstetrics, and pain medicine. Pediatric anesthesia also has a tremendous growth area in the system. Between now and 2027, the health system will grow into two new ambulatory surgical centers, a multispecialty and research hospital, two community hospitals, and several more medical offices. Excitement has never been higher with the unparalleled access we expect to gain to cutting edge patient care and research opportunities.

Our training programs feature multiple successful enterprises to include a core Residency program with over 60 residents. Additionally, we have a Pain Medicine Fellowship, Critical Care Fellowship, and Liver Transplant Fellowship. We are also happy to announce the recent launch of our Student Registered Nurse Anesthetist Program in partnership with the UT Health San Antonio School of Nursing.

University Hospital, our primary teaching facility, is a state-of-the-art tertiary care center that is responsible for both adult and pediatric level-1 trauma in the South Texas region. We cover tens of thousands of cases annually across broad fields including cardiothoracic, structural heart, orthopedic, trauma, transplant, neurosurgery, spine, robotic, gynecologic surgery, and a host of medical procedures such as interventional pulmonology and advanced gastroenterology. Intensive care units dedicated to ECMO and post-transplant care have been integral to a nationally recognized success in outcomes. The new completed University Health Women and Children’s Hospital will surpass 5,000 deliveries per year and lead the region in complex obstetric care as well as neonatology. Our Pain Medicine consultants, as part of the new UT Neuromodulation Center, perform thousands of procedures annually to treat pain of the spine, major joints, and nervous system.

Our other teaching facility, the Audie L. Murphy Veterans Administration Hospital, part of the South Texas Veterans Healthcare System, sees over a million patient visits per year. The Audie L. Murphy Hospital trains over 200 residents yearly, among the highest in the VA system nationwide. The operating rooms include general surgery, robotics, and cardiac surgery suites. The VA campus is also the home of San Antonio Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center, which is one of only 5 centers in the country. In the SICU, our residents and faculty provide critical care services for post-surgical patients with critical care needs including cardiac, vascular, general, ENT, and neurosurgical services.

Research, informatics, and biomedical engineering are important missions for our department. Strong collaborations with departments such as surgery, pharmacology, and psychiatry fuel our clinical trials in areas such as neuromodulation, transfusion medicine, addiction, and persistent post-surgical pain. UT Health Presidential Translational and Entrepreneurial Research grants and other extramural funding have stimulated development and commercialization of medical devices for advanced airway management. Conjoint projects with investigators at The University of Texas San Antonio have advanced governing mathematics and computational tools in complex operating room staffing models and deployment.

Please take a few more minutes to review our pages on this website detailing our programs and initiatives. Whether you are a prospective student, resident, patient, or faculty member, I am sure you will agree with me that the Department of Anesthesiology at the UT Health San Antonio, Texas is a dynamic and progressive contributor to the health of our patients and the field of anesthesiology.

Maxim Eckmann, MD
Professor and Chair
UT Health Department of Anesthesiology