Anaesthesia
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There has been a great deal of progress in our understanding and management of rheumatoid arthritis in recent years. The peri-operative management of rheumatoid arthritis patients can be challenging and anaesthetists need to be familiar with recent developments and potential risks of this multi system disease.
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We highlight the areas we think important for future development of the subspeciality. The ultimate goal is to improve patient care and safety and to do this, we need to identify how and where episodes of harm arise. Simply continuing with current practice does not represent the best path towards our ultimate goal; objective evidence is needed to inform changes in practice.
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Apnoea due to airway obstruction is an ever present concern in anaesthesia and critical care practice and results in rapid development of hypoxaemia that is not always remediable by manual bag-mask ventilation. As it is often difficult or impossible to study experimentally (although some historical animal data exist), it is useful to model the kinetics of hypoxaemia following airway obstruction. Despite being a complex event, the consequences of airway obstruction can be predicted with reasonable fidelity using mathematical and computer modelling. Over the last 15 years, a number of high fidelity mathematical and computer models have been developed, that have thrown light on this important event.
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We applied the C-MAC videolaryngoscope in 52 consecutive patients who were found to have an unexpected Cormack and Lehane grade-3 (n = 49) and grade-4 (n = 3) laryngeal view with the Macintosh laryngoscope. The glottic view improved in 49 (94%) patients using the C-MAC. ⋯ In one patient, tracheal intubation failed using the C-MAC despite the presence of a Cormack and Lehane grade-2. These results suggest that the C-MAC videolaryngoscope has a role as a rescue device in cases of an initially difficult laryngeal view.