Background: Latex allergy is the second cause of perioperative anaphylaxis. Anesthesiologists play a key role in opportune identification of risk factors, as well as clinical diagnosis and therapeutic management.
Objective: To evaluate the anesthesiologists aptitude to identify and treat latex allergy.
Participants and methods: Sixty-six anesthesiologists from five general hospitals located at Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, were evaluated. Aptitude was determined by applying a validated structured instrument. Aptitude levels were measured by using an ordinal scale. Comparisons were performed using Mann Whitney U test.
Results: Anesthesiologist's global aptitude ranged from -2 to 27 with a median of 8 (from a maximum value in the scale of 40); frequencies by each category of the scale were: Random 48 (72.7%), Very bad 11 (16.7%), Bad 4 (6.1%) and Medium only 3 (4.5%). Both Good and Very good categories registered no anesthesiologist. The relationship of this indicator with other variables did not reach statistical significance (KW 6.478; p = 0.16617).
Conclusions: A suboptimal aptitude was identified among anesthesiologists regarding identification of latex allergy. A need to establish new strategies for educative intervention in order to improve this issue was identified.