Journal of clinical anesthesia
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Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with postoperative airway obstruction, hypoxemia, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiorespiratory arrest, hypoxic encephalopathy, and death. Three cases highlighting important issues in patients with OSA are presented that occurred prior to and after implementation of an OSA protocol.
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Two cases of posterolateral corner reconstruction of the knee with postoperative sciatic perineural analgesia using a mixture of clonidine and buprenorphine, are presented. Numeric rating scores for pain with movement were 0-2 out of 10 postoperatively after injection. Gross motor function below the knee was maintained in both cases.
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A patient with advanced Chagas disease presented with symptoms attributable to dilated cardiomyopathy and mitral regurgitation. Although esophageal involvement is part of the constellation of findings in Chagas, transesophageal echocardiography was safely used to guide the mitral valve surgery.
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To compare intubation difficulty in obese and non-obese patients by intubation difficulty scale (IDS), intubation duration measurement, and oxygen saturation (SaO(2)) levels. ⋯ Difficult intubation was more prevalent among obese than non-obese patients, but intubation duration and lowest SaO(2) levels during intubation were not. Moreover, the modified Mallampati test was found to be a moderately good (60%) predictor of difficult intubation among obese patients.