Anesthesiology
-
Approximately 80 million inpatient and outpatient surgeries are performed annually in the United States. Widely variable and fragmented perioperative care exposes these surgical patients to lapses in expected standard of care, increases the chance for operational mistakes and accidents, results in unnecessary and potentially detrimental care, needlessly drives up costs, and adversely affects the patient healthcare experience. ⋯ To justify implementation of this new healthcare delivery model to surgical colleagues, administrators, and patients and maintain the integrity of evidenced-based practice, the nascent PSH model must be rigorously evaluated. This special article proposes comparative effectiveness research aims or objectives and an optimal study design for the novel PSH model.
-
General anesthesia induces unconsciousness along with functional changes in brain networks. Considering the essential role of hub structures for efficient information transmission, the authors hypothesized that anesthetics have an effect on the hub structure of functional brain networks. ⋯ Propofol reconfigures network hub structure in the brain and reverses the phase relationship between frontal and parietal regions. Changes in network topology are more closely associated with states of consciousness than connectivity and may be the primary mechanism for the observed loss of frontal to parietal feedback during general anesthesia.
-
Numerous risk factors have been identified for perioperative stroke, but there are conflicting data regarding the role of β adrenergic receptor blockade in general and metoprolol in particular. ⋯ Routine use of preoperative metoprolol, but not atenolol, is associated with stroke after noncardiac surgery, even after adjusting for comorbidities. Intraoperative metoprolol but not esmolol or labetalol, is associated with increased risk of perioperative stroke. Drugs other than metoprolol should be considered during the perioperative period if β blockade is required.
-
Research regarding difficult mask ventilation (DMV) combined with difficult laryngoscopy (DL) is extremely limited even though each technique serves as a rescue for one another. ⋯ DMV combined with DL is an infrequent but not rare phenomenon. Most patients can be managed with the use of direct or videolaryngoscopy. An easy to use unweighted risk scale has robust discriminating capacity.
-
Isoflurane releases renal tubular transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) and protects against ischemic acute kidney injury. Recent studies suggest that TGF-β1 can induce a cytoprotective cytokine interleukin (IL)-11. In this study, the authors tested the hypothesis that isoflurane protects against ischemic acute kidney injury by direct induction of renal tubular IL-11 synthesis. ⋯ In this study, the authors suggest that isoflurane induces renal tubular IL-11 via TGF-β1 signaling to protect against ischemic acute kidney injury.