Department of Anesthesiology, Plastic Surgery Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, 33 Ba-Da-Chu Road, Shi-Jing-Shan District, Beijing 100144, China (email: [email protected])
Editor's Note: Pediatric Anesthesia is keen to encourage correspondence and we have a large body of very active letter writers in our specialty. During 2008 a large backlog of letters has accumulated which has led to delay in publication for some authors. Priority is given to letters commenting on previous articles and subsequent author's replies. In order to be fair to all our correspondents a word limit of 800 words including a maximum of 5 references will be used by the editor as space for the correspondence section is somewhat limited. For the next three issues, however, a larger correspondence section will be published to clear the backlog of letters. My aims are to ensure that the letters section remains fresh and interesting and encourages debate. I hope to continue to allow early reporting of innovations, alert readers to unusual adverse events, encourage sharing of good practice and highlight learning points from a broad sweep of clinical practice across the world.