British journal of anaesthesia
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Clinical Trial
Preoperative fasting does not affect haemodynamic status: a prospective, non-inferiority, echocardiography study.
The link between preoperative fasting and hypovolaemia remains unclear. We tested the hypothesis that preoperative fasting does not significantly increase the proportion of patients with hypovolaemia according to transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) criteria. ⋯ Preoperative fasting did not alter TTE dynamic and static preload indices in ASA I-III adult patients. These results suggest that preoperative fasting does not induce significant hypovolaemia. Clinical trial registration NCT 01258361.
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We report the case of a patient who underwent third time revision of double heart valve replacement. Mediastinal dissection for right atrium cannulation was complicated by laceration of the superior vena cava; this required temporary rescue clamping of the vessel. The patient suffered complete visual loss related to bilateral retrobulbar haematoma. Acute elevation of superior vena cava pressure due to vascular clamping and administration of large amounts of fluid through the central venous jugular catheter could have caused the postoperative visual loss.
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Emergency major gastrointestinal (GI) surgery carries a considerable risk of mortality and postoperative complications. Effective management of complications and appropriate organization of postoperative care may improve outcome. The importance of the latter is poorly described in emergency GI surgical patients. We aimed to present mortality data and evaluate the postoperative care pathways used after emergency GI surgery. ⋯ Mortality in emergency major GI surgical patients remains high. Failure to allocate patients to the appropriate level of care immediately after surgery may contribute to the high postoperative mortality. Future research should focus on improving risk stratification and evaluating the effect of different postoperative care pathways in emergency GI surgery.
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It is important to be able to accurately monitor cardiac output (CO) during high-risk surgery and in critically ill patients. The invasiveness of the pulmonary artery catheter (PAC) limits its use, and therefore, new minimally invasive methods for CO monitoring are needed. A potential method is estimation of CO from endogenous carbon dioxide measurements, using a differentiated Fick's principle to determine effective pulmonary blood flow (EPBF). In this study, we aimed to validate a novel capnodynamic method (COEPBF) in a wide range of clinically relevant haemodynamic conditions. ⋯ COEPBF showed reliable trending abilities, equivalent to COPAC. COEPBF and COPAC also showed low bias but high percentage errors. Further studies in animal models of lung injury and in high-risk surgery patients are warranted.