[Four-decades of development in anesthesiology and a new era of pain research in National Taiwan University (NTU)].

The Department of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University (NTU) was founded in 1953 with the first chairman Doctor Kwang-yi Lee. Since its establishment 40 years ago, the department has made many contributions and caused great influence to the development of anesthesiology and clinical anesthesia in Taiwan. Among these, the establishment of the Society of Anesthesiologists of ROC (Taipei, Taiwan) in 1956, the publication of the society journal, Acta Anesthesiologica Sinica in 1961, the establishment of the Board of Anesthesiologists (1971), and the participation of the important international anesthesia-related societies such as The World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (1964), The Asian and Australasian Regional Section of the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (1967), the International College of Surgeons (1969). During the past 40 years, the department has been experiencing dramatic changes both in the hardware (the operating room facilities and anesthetic equipment) and the software (the staff member, the training of clinical anesthesiologists and researchers, the quantity and quality of anesthetic and pain service). The full-blown modernization took place with the opening of the new operating room in the new medical center one more year ago (October 29, 1991). New anesthetic machines and monitoring systems together with other modern facilities and equipment annodated the new era for the department. The annual service has reached more than 16,000 cases. As a national university hospital, with the mission of teaching, research and service, we are the pioneer for anesthesia in open-heart surgery and organ transplantation as well as in pain and immunological-related anesthesia research.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)