Chest
-
Postoperative fever occurs in many patients. If no infection is found, atelectasis, if present, may be blamed. This study of 100 postoperative cardiac surgery patients followed up from day of surgery through the second postoperative day with daily portable chest radiographs and continuous bladder thermometry was designed to look for an association between atelectasis and fever. ⋯ When defined as temperature > or = 38.5 degrees C, the daily incidence of fever fell daily from 14 to 3 to 1%. Using chi 2 analysis, no association could be found between fever and amount of atelectasis. This contradicts common textbook dogma but agrees with previous human study and animal experiments.
-
We describe the novel approach of antegrade radial artery cannulation in five pediatric patients after failure of standard retrograde cannulation by percutaneous and cutdown technique. This antegrade cannulation led to successful, reliable continuous blood pressure monitoring and arterial blood sampling without complications. We believe antegrade cannulation can be successfully used when radial arteries are obstructed and retrograde blood flow is observed during failed cutdown attempts at standard retrograde arterial cannulation.