Anaesthesia
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Observational Study
The association between borderline pre-operative anaemia in women and outcomes after cardiac surgery: a cohort study.
Anaemia is common before cardiac surgery and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The World Health Organization (WHO) definition of anaemia is lower for women than for men by 10 g.l-1 , potentially putting women at a disadvantage compared with men with regard to pre-operative optimisation. Our hypothesis was that women with borderline anaemia (defined by us as haemoglobin concentration 120-129 g.l-1 ) would have a higher rate of red cell transfusion, morbidity and mortality than non-anaemic women (haemoglobin ≥ 130 g.l-1 ). ⋯ Short- and long-term postoperative survival was comparable in both groups. Borderline anaemia is associated with increased red cell transfusion and prolonged hospital stay. Future research should address whether correction of borderline anaemia results in improved outcomes.
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The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors recommends the prospective registration of interventional clinical trials. We aimed to assess the compliance with these guidelines for manuscripts submitted to and published by a single anaesthetic journal. We examined the rates of prospective trial registration, the incidence of discrepancies in primary outcome measure(s) and sample sizes, and the citation metrics of all randomised controlled trials published in Anaesthesia over a 3-year period (2014-2016). ⋯ There was no difference in the median (IQR [range]) number of citations per month since publication between prospectively (0.27 (0.15-0.46 [0.00-1.59]), and retrospectively (0.39 (0.15-0.62 [0.10-0.67]); p = 0.502) or unregistered (0.33 (0.10-0.52 [0.00-0.67]); p = 0.867) studies. Our results suggest that prospective clinical trial registration has no influence on acceptance for publication by Anaesthesia or subsequent citation metrics. The international recommendation for prospective trial registration appears to have not been universally incorporated into anaesthetic-related research practice.