Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Aug 2011
Automatic notifications mediated by anesthesia information management systems reduce the frequency of prolonged gaps in blood pressure documentation.
Arterial blood pressure (BP) measurement at least every 5 minutes is part of the American Society of Anesthesiologists' monitoring standard, but prolonged BP gaps in electronic anesthesia records have been noted. We undertook multicenter studies to determine the frequency of cases with at least 1 interval ≥10 minutes between successive BP measurements and then to ascertain whether educational feedback via an electronic, near real-time notification system alerting providers to the presence of such gaps would reduce their incidence. ⋯ BP gaps of ≥10 minutes were common in electronic anesthesia records, and their incidence was reduced but not eliminated by near real-time feedback to providers. The American Society of Anesthesiologists' standard for BP documentation every 5 minutes might not be achievable with current practices and technology. Anesthesia information management systems users need to be cognizant of the potential for gaps in BP measurement, take steps to minimize their occurrence, and document an explanation when such failures occur.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Aug 2011
An in vitro investigation of the coagulation effects of exogenous oxytocin using thromboelastography in healthy parturients.
We investigated the coagulation effects in vitro of exogenous oxytocin in whole blood of healthy term parturients. ⋯ The results of this in vitro investigation suggest that exogenous oxytocin is associated with modest hypercoagulable effects in the maternal blood of healthy term parturients.
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After submission of a manuscript to a peer-reviewed anesthesia journal, several authors were asked to cite additional references from the journal to which they submitted. We hypothesized that there were differences among the anesthesiology journals in both the total number of self-citations and the proportion of self-citations to the total number of references in each manuscript for the years 2005 and 2010. ⋯ Although the number and rate of self-citations differed among anesthesia journals, the contribution of self-citation to IF has declined over time for most anesthesia journals. These results suggest periodic reassessment may be important to ensure that the publication process remains transparent and impartial to bias.