Paediatric anaesthesia
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Paediatric anaesthesia · Feb 2010
Multicenter StudyAPA national audit of pediatric opioid infusions.
A prospective audit of neonates, infants, and children receiving opioid infusion techniques managed by pediatric acute pain teams from across the United Kingdom and Eire was undertaken over a period of 17 months. The aim was to determine the incidence, nature, and severity of serious clinical incidents (SCIs) associated with the techniques of continuous opioid infusion, patient-controlled analgesia, and nurse-controlled analgesia in patients aged 0-18. ⋯ The overall incidence of 1 : 10,000 of serious harm with opioid infusion techniques in children is comparable to the risks with pediatric epidural infusions and central blocks identified by two recent UK national audits (1,2). Avoidable factors were identified including prescription and pump programming errors, use of concurrent sedatives or opioids by different routes and overgenerous dosing in infants. Early respiratory depression in patients with specific risk factors, such as young age, neurodevelopmental, respiratory, or cardiac comorbidities, who are receiving nurse-controlled analgesia or continuous opioid infusion suggests that closer monitoring for at least 2 h is needed for these cases. As a result of this audit, we can provide parents with better information on relative risks to help the process of informed consent.
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Paediatric anaesthesia · Feb 2010
Blood loss, replacement, and associated morbidity in infants and children undergoing craniofacial surgery.
Pediatric craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) procedures involve wide scalp dissections with multiple osteotomies and have been associated with significant morbidity. The aim of this study was to document the incidence of clinically important problems, particularly related to blood loss, and perform a risk factor analysis. ⋯ In pediatric CFR procedures where the volume of blood loss routinely exceeds one blood volume, intraoperative administration of FFP favorably impacted postoperative laboratory coagulation parameters.