IN MEMORIAM

Remembering Dr. Edmonds (Ted) Eger II

Chanhung Lee, MD, PhD
Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care,
University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Edmonds Eger II

On August 26, 2017, we got the very sad news that Dr. Ted Eger had passed away at the age of 86.  To many anesthesiologists and others working in the surgical field around the world, he was the giant recognized for the mathematical definition of the dosing and efficiency of inhaled anesthetic gas, the so-called minimum alveolar concentration (MAC), and he was a pioneer in the development of the modern anesthetic gases: isoflurane, sevoflurane and desflurane. To the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) anesthesia community, his passing was also a heartbreaking loss, a loss of our beloved mentor and teacher in our close family.

Following the steps of the founding chairman of UCSF Department of Anesthesia, Dr. Stuart Cullen, and another giant in anesthesia, Dr. John Severinghaus from Iowa, Dr. Eger joined the young department at UCSF in 1960. In addition to his momentous contributions in research, he also fostered generations of national and international leaders in anesthesia through various collaborations during the more than half-century of time he spent here. On the long list of their accomplishments, to take a quick example, are 24 department chairs in anesthesiology worldwide. Read his obituary here.

For the anesthesiologists at UCSF today, Dr. Eger will be deeply missed as their role model and teacher. A deluge of emails have circulated in the department reflecting memories of his support to young colleagues and his love of teaching, including “backing up a young resident in the operation room against a surgeon’s racial prejudice in the early years,” his famous motto “research should equal fun,” and numerous lectures and mock oral exams he taught the residents. The UCSF Anesthesia Class of 2018 was the second-to-last year of residents who received Dr. Eger’s series lectures on inhaled anesthetics in their entering month of July. They feel “forever grateful to have learned from one of the greatest giants in anesthesia, and will always remember the wit, humor, tact and sharpness of Dr. Eger.”

One of Dr. Eger’s biggest regrets was that he had not been able to discover the mechanisms underlying inhaled anesthetics, which is an area of ongoing active research for a few members of the Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesia and Critical Care (SNACC), including the immediate past president, Dr. George Mashour. We are hopeful that, one day, someone here from SNACC will have the “ah-ha” moment that Dr. Eger had long been hoping for.