Current opinion in anaesthesiology
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Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Jun 2000
Perioperative considerations in the management of the patient taking herbal medicines.
The use of herbal products has recently increased dramatically in the United States. Patients are flocking to use these and many other complementary or alternative therapies. ⋯ The following review will discuss the limitations of Food and Drug Administration protection, and will review as well as provide an outline of the potential adverse reactions and side-effects that might affect anesthesia administration. To date, no double-blind, placebo-controlled studies have been carried out that specifically address herbal-anesthetic interactions or outcomes.
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Over the years, ketamine has found many applications in paediatric anaesthesiology. Recent insights into the mechanism of its central action, and the pharmacology of its isomers have led to a re-evaluation of this drug, expanding the range of indications in adults. The best examples of the uses of ketamine as an analgesic are: in brief diagnostic or therapeutic procedures, during the post-operative period in neonates and infants as well as in paediatric anaesthesia and intensive care.
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Recent studies suggest that perioperative pulmonary aspiration is an infrequent event (approximately 1 : 2000-3000 general anesthetics), but its impact on individual patients can be devastating. Patients who appear to have the greatest risk of developing severe pulmonary morbidity or dying after aspiration are those who are sick (American Society of Anesthesiologists physical classification 3 or greater) and elderly. As a general rule, children have less morbidity from pulmonary aspiration.
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Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Apr 2000
Severity scoring systems and the prediction of outcome from intensive care.
Severity scoring systems are tools that provide a predicted mortality for a group of intensive care unit patients on the basis of derangement of their physiology and some past medical history. This predicted mortality can then be compared with the actual mortality to give some indicator of the effectiveness of the package of care delivered by the intensive care unit, corrected for differences in case-mix. ⋯ This may be partly due to limitations in their ability to predict mortality outside the population on which they were developed, and to the change in calibration of the system with time and advances in medical science. This review briefly addresses the limitations of severity scoring systems in light of recent publications.