Canadian journal of anaesthesia = Journal canadien d'anesthésie
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Awake tracheal intubation is one recommended option to address select situations in the management of a patient with an anticipated difficult airway. A scarcity of data exists on how often awake intubation is performed or whether its use is changing over time, particularly with the increasingly widespread availability of video laryngoscopy. This retrospective database review was undertaken to determine the incidence, success, and complications of awake intubation and the incidence of other tracheal intubation techniques in the operating room over a 12-yr period (2002-2013) at our institution. ⋯ At our tertiary care centre, we did not find a significant change in the use of awake tracheal intubation over the studied years 2002-2013 despite increasing availability and use of video laryngoscopy. It appears that awake tracheal intubation retains an important and consistent role in the management of the difficult airway.
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Serum creatinine is the most commonly used indicator of renal function, but its derivative, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), has been shown to be superior in non-surgical settings. It remains unknown if eGFR better predicts postoperative mortality in non-cardiac surgical patients. We thus tested the hypothesis that eGFR predicts 30-day mortality after non-cardiac surgery better than serum creatinine. ⋯ The eGFR is a modestly better predictor of 30-day mortality than serum creatinine in patients having inpatient non-cardiac surgery. Given that eGFR is often reported by clinical laboratories and is otherwise easy to calculate, it should generally be used in preference to creatinine alone.