Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2009
Comparative StudyA comparison of transmittance and reflectance pulse oximetry during vascular surgery.
New reflectance pulse oximetry probes placed on the forehead may be an improvement over transmittance probes placed on a finger, toe, or earlobe in patients with compromised perfusion. We compared the reliability and accuracy of the 2 types of probes in patients undergoing vascular surgery. ⋯ The new reflectance forehead Spo(2) probe tested has acceptable agreement with the older transmittance probe placed on the earlobe for pulse oximetry within typical ranges of Spo(2) in patients undergoing vascular surgery.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2009
Comparative StudyDoes patient position influence the reading of the bispectral index monitor?
Bispectral index (BIS) was developed to monitor patients' level of consciousness under general anesthesia. Several factors have been found to alter BIS readings without affecting the depth of anesthesia. We conducted a study to assess the impact of changing patients' position on BIS readings. ⋯ Changing a patient's position significantly affects the BIS values, which might affect the interpretation of anesthetic depth.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2009
Need for emergency surgical airway reduced by a comprehensive difficult airway program.
Inability to intubate and ventilate patients with respiratory failure is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. A patient is considered to have a difficult airway if an anesthesiologist or other health care provider experienced in airway management is unable to ventilate the patient's lungs using bag-mask ventilation and/or is unable to intubate the trachea using direct laryngoscopy. ⋯ A comprehensive difficult airway program was associated with a reduction in the number of emergency surgical airway procedures performed for the inability of an anesthesiologist to intubate and ventilate, a reduction that was sustained over an 11-yr period. This decrease occurred despite an increase in the number of patients reported to have a difficult airway and an overall increase in the total number of patients receiving anesthesia per year.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2009
Comparative StudyDefining the reliability of sonoanatomy identification by novices in ultrasound-guided pediatric ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerve blockade.
The ilioinguinal (II)/iliohypogastric (IH) nerve block is a safe, frequently used block that has been improved in efficacy and safety by the use of ultrasound guidance. We assessed the frequency with which pediatric anesthesiologists with limited experience with ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia could correctly identify anatomical structures within the inguinal region. Our primary outcome was to compare the frequency of correct identification of the transversus abdominis (TA) muscle with the frequency of correct identification of the II/IH nerves. We used 2 ultrasound machines with different capabilities to assess a potential equipment effect on success of structure identification and time taken for structure identification. ⋯ We have demonstrated that although there is no difference in the overall accuracy of muscle plane versus II/IH nerve identification, the muscle planes are reliably identified after fewer scans of the inguinal region. We suggest that a reliable end point for the inexperienced practitioner of ultrasound-guided II/IH nerve block may be the TA/internal oblique plane where the nerves are reported to be found in 100% of cases.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2009
Comparative StudyA visual stethoscope to detect the position of the tracheal tube.
Advancing a tracheal tube into the bronchus produces unilateral breath sounds. We created a Visual Stethoscope that allows real-time fast Fourier transformation of the sound signal and 3-dimensional (frequency-amplitude-time) color rendering of the results on a personal computer with simultaneous processing of 2 individual sound signals. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the Visual Stethoscope can detect bronchial intubation in comparison with auscultation. ⋯ During advancement of the tracheal tube, alterations of the shape of the visualized breath sounds using the Visual Stethoscope appeared before the changes of the breath sounds were detected by auscultation. Bilateral breath sounds disappeared when the tip of the tracheal tube was advanced beyond the carina in both groups.