Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 2018
Impact of Regional Anesthesia on Gastroesophageal Cancer Surgery Outcomes: A Systematic Review of the Literature.
Regional anesthesia may play a beneficial role in long-term oncological outcomes. Specifically, it has been suggested that it can prolong recurrence-free survival and overall survival after gastrointestinal cancer surgery, including gastric and esophageal cancer, by modulating the immune and inflammatory response. However, the results from human studies are conflicting. ⋯ A total of 6 studies were included in the quality analysis and systematic review. A meta-analysis was not conducted for several reasons, including high heterogeneity among studies, low quality of the reports, and lack of standardized outcomes definitions. Although the literature suggests that regional anesthesia has some modulatory effects on the inflammatory and immunological response in the studied patient population, our systematic review indicates that there is no evidence to support or refute the use of epidural anesthesia or analgesia with the goal of reducing cancer recurrence after gastroesophageal cancer surgery.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 2018
ReviewSurvival Analysis and Interpretation of Time-to-Event Data: The Tortoise and the Hare.
Survival analysis, or more generally, time-to-event analysis, refers to a set of methods for analyzing the length of time until the occurrence of a well-defined end point of interest. A unique feature of survival data is that typically not all patients experience the event (eg, death) by the end of the observation period, so the actual survival times for some patients are unknown. This phenomenon, referred to as censoring, must be accounted for in the analysis to allow for valid inferences. ⋯ These methods are by far the most commonly used techniques for such data in medical literature. Illustrative examples from studies published in Anesthesia & Analgesia demonstrate how these techniques are used in practice. Full parametric models and models to deal with special circumstances, such as recurrent events models, competing risks models, and frailty models, are briefly discussed.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 2018
Description of a Novel Set-Up for Functional Echocardiographic Assessment of Left Ventricular Performance During Ex Vivo Heart Perfusion.
Ex vivo heart perfusion (EVHP) is a new technology aimed at decreasing cold ischemia time and evaluating cardiac function before transplanting a donor heart. In an experimental EVHP swine model, we tested a 3D-printed custom-made set-up to perform surface echocardiography on an isolated beating heart during left ventricular loading. The views obtained at any time point were equivalent to standard transesophageal and transthoracic views. A decrease in left ventricular function during EVHP was observed in all experiments.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Sep 2018
Promoting a Restrictive Intraoperative Transfusion Strategy: The Influence of a Transfusion Guideline and a Novel Software Tool.
The effect of neither transfusion guidelines nor decision support tools on intraoperative transfusion has been previously evaluated. The University of Michigan introduced a transfusion guideline in 2009, and in 2011, the Department of Anesthesiology developed a transfusion decision support tool. The primary aim of this study was to assess the associations of the transfusion guideline and the optional use of the software transfusion tool with intraoperative behaviors; pretransfusion hematocrit assessment (whether or not a hematocrit was checked before each red cell unit) and restrictive red cell use (withholding transfusion unless the hematocrit was ≤21%). ⋯ The introduction of a transfusion guideline was independently associated with increased intraoperative pretransfusion hematocrit assessment and restrictive transfusion. The use of a software tool did not further influence either behavior.