Anesthetic Shortage Update – January 2008

It’s been a while since we posted anything about the anesthetic shortage, so I thought we would give an update. Over the summer and fall, anesthetic inventories remained high with the exception of Astra brand anesthetics. As of now, we are under the winter shipping rules for anesthetic, and shipments may thin out a bit, especially in extremely cold weather.

I spoke with several dealers across the United States last week about inventories and rationing. All said that they ordered heavy going into winter and that they didn’t think anesthetic would be a problem through the spring. A couple of dealers are still rationing anesthetic to their customers, which might not be a bad thing for others to consider.

I think that we are in much better shape than a year ago with regards to this anesthetic shortage.

On a side note…Eastman Kodak is raising their prices on anesthetic 5% as of February 1, 2008.

DI

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