British journal of anaesthesia
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with a loss of cholinergic neurons resulting in profound memory disturbances and irreversible impairment of cognitive function. The central cholinergic system is involved in the action of general anaesthetic agents. ⋯ From this point of view, patients with AD, characterized by a compromised neuronal transmission, represent particular cases in which the choice of anaesthesia drugs may have a negative effect on the postoperative outcome. A future challenge may be the identification of brain targets of general anaesthetics which do not expose patients to postoperative cognitive dysfunction, nor interfere with prognosis of brain degenerative disease.
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Multicenter Study
A Scottish National Prospective Study of airway management skills in new-start SHOs.
There is increasing concern about the ability of junior anaesthetists to manage the airway correctly and alarm that this may lead to adverse events. ⋯ We recommend that facemask anaesthesia is given a high priority in the formative months and that a target number of intubations should be carried out before providing anaesthesia without direct supervision.
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Although tracheostomy tube displacement is uncommon, the management is often difficult and the associated mortality is high. It is important to ensure that the airway is secure and then either replace or reposition the tracheostomy tube. This case report describes the use of an Aintree intubation catheter (C-CAE-19.0-56-AIC, William Cook Europe, Denmark) mounted on an intubating fibre-optic bronchoscope (11302BD1, Karl Storz Endoskope, Germany) to reposition a partially displaced tracheostomy tube.
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Predicting response to recombinant factor VIIa in non-haemophiliac patients with severe haemorrhage.
Despite increasing use of recombinant factor VIIa (rFVIIa) in non-haemophiliac patients, it is unclear when rFVIIa might be effective. ⋯ High SOFA score and failure to respond to one adequate dose of rFVIIa appear to identify patients with poor prognosis. These observations may help in determining when rFVIIa treatment is likely to be futile.
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Current practice at high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV) initiation is a stepwise increase of the constant applied airway pressure to achieve lung recruitment. We hypothesized that HFOV would lead to more adverse cerebral haemodynamics than does pressure controlled ventilation (PCV) in the presence of experimental intracranial hypertension (IH) and acute lung injury (ALI) in pigs with similar mean airway pressure settings. ⋯ In animals with elevated ICP and ALI, both ventilatory modes had effects upon cerebral haemodynamics. The effects upon cerebral haemodynamics were dependent of the P(T) level without differences between both ventilatory modes at similar P(mean) settings. HFOV seems to be a possible alternative ventilatory strategy when MAP deterioration can be avoided.