Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jun 2013
The hemodynamic management of 5177 neurosurgical and orthopedic patients who underwent surgery in the sitting or "beach chair" position without incidence of adverse neurologic events.
A small number of highly publicized case reports describe ischemic brain or spinal cord injury after surgery in the sitting ("beach chair") position. The incidence of such catastrophic outcomes remains unknown, as does the relationship between arterial blood pressure management and injury, because few hemodynamic details were included with those 4 cases. To add quantitative data to the discussion of anesthesia in the sitting position, we examined the detailed hemodynamics of a large number of patients managed at our institution who sustained no similar catastrophic outcomes. ⋯ This study provides a descriptive summary of intraoperative blood pressure changes, measured either invasively or noninvasively, and referenced to either head or heart level, but never lower than heart level, in patients under general anesthesia in the sitting position who sustained no catastrophic outcomes.