British journal of anaesthesia
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Anticipation of the difficult airway: preoperative airway assessment, an educational and quality improvement tool.
Assessment of the potentially difficult airway (DA) is a critical aspect of resident education. We investigated the impact of a new assessment form on airway prediction and management by anaesthesia residents. We hypothesized that residents would demonstrate improvement in evaluation of DAs over the study duration. ⋯ The use of a comprehensive airway assessment did not improve resident ability to predict a DA in an academic, tertiary-based hospital, anaesthesiology residency training programme.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerves cannot be selectively blocked by using ultrasound guidance: a volunteer study.
Ilioinguinal (IL) and iliohypogastric (IH) nerve blocks are used in patients with chronic postherniorrhaphy pain. The present study tested the hypothesis that our method, previously developed in cadavers, blocks the nerves separately and selectively in human volunteers. ⋯ The IL and IH nerves cannot be selectively blocked even if volumes below 1 ml are used. The most likely explanation is the spread of local anaesthetic from one nerve to the other, although this could not be directly observed in most cases.