Anaesthesia
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Good multidisciplinary communication is crucial to the safe management of women requiring non-elective Caesarean section. Anaesthetists should participate actively in resuscitation of the fetus in utero; relief of aortocaval compression is paramount. Epidural top-up with levobupivacaine 0.5% is the anaesthetic of choice for women who have been receiving labour epidural analgesia. ⋯ Pre-eclampsia is not a contra-indication to single-shot spinal anaesthesia, which is the technique of choice for most women presenting for Caesarean section without an epidural catheter in situ. Induction and maintenance doses of drugs for general anaesthesia should not be reduced in the belief that the baby will be harmed. Early postoperative observations are geared towards the detection of overt or covert haemorrhage.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Bronchial mucus transport velocity in patients receiving anaesthesia with propofol and morphine or propofol and remifentanil.
In vitro morphine does not reduce cilia beat frequency, a key factor determining bronchial mucus transport velocity. There are no reports about the effect of remifentanil on bronchial mucus transport. We compared the bronchial mucus transport velocity in patients having total intravenous anaesthesia with either propofol and morphine, or propofol and remifentanil. ⋯ Compared with morphine, bronchial mucus transport velocity was significantly reduced in patients receiving remifentanil (morphine mean (SD) 9.2 (5.8) vs remifentanil 4.2 (3.0) mm.min(-1), p = 0.028). Anaesthesia with remifentanil may lead to significantly impaired bronchociliary clearance in comparison to morphine. This could have clinical implications, in particular in patients at risk.
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Over-running operating lists are known to be a common cause of cancellation of operations on the day of surgery. We investigated whether lists were overbooked because surgeons were optimistic in their estimates of the time that operations would take to complete. We used a questionnaire to assess the estimates of total operation time of 22 surgeons, 35 anaesthetists and 16 senior nursing staff for 31 common, general surgical and urological procedures. ⋯ We then applied the average of the surgeons' estimates prospectively to 50 consecutive published surgical lists. Surgical estimates were very accurate in predicting the actual duration of the list (r2= 0.61; p < 0.001), but were poor at booking the list to within its scheduled duration: 50% of lists were predictably overbooked, 50% over-ran their scheduled time, and 34% of lists suffered a cancellation. We suggest that using the estimates of operating times to plan lists would reduce the incidence of predictable over-runs and cancellations.
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Multicenter Study
The impact of organ failures and their relationship with outcome in intensive care: analysis of a prospective multicentre database of adult admissions.
The database of a multicentre cohort study was analysed to determine the impact of intensive care unit (ICU) organ failures and their association with ICU mortality using sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA). A consecutive sample of 873 adult patients with a non-neurological diagnosis was identified. SOFA scores were measured every 24 h of ICU stay. ⋯ However ICU death after 7 days was not associated with total SOFA score at admission, p = 0.36. Compared to patients with a day 6 total SOFA score = 5, there was a 1-unit (95% CI 0.8-3.1) increase in the odds ratio of ICU death after 7 days with every 5-unit increase in SOFA score on day 6, p = 0.009. Continuous assessments of organ failures during an ICU admission are more useful than scores measured at admission to determine outcome and to compare ICUs.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The effect of caudal block on functional residual capacity and ventilation homogeneity in healthy children.
Caudal block results in a motor blockade that can reduce abdominal wall tension. This could interact with the balance between chest wall and lung recoil pressure and tension of the diaphragm, which determines the static resting volume of the lung. On this rationale, we hypothesised that caudal block causes an increase in functional residual capacity and ventilation distribution in anaesthetised children. ⋯ In both groups, parameters of ventilation distribution were consistent with the changes in functional residual capacity. Caudal block resulted in a significant increase in functional residual capacity and improvement in ventilation homogeneity in comparison with the control group. This indicates that caudal block might have a beneficial effect on gas exchange in anaesthetised, spontaneously breathing preschool-aged children with healthy lungs.