British journal of anaesthesia
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Anaesthesia is the largest hospital-based specialty in the UK, and the activities of the anaesthesia workforce underpin the care of all patients in the hospital sector. Changes in the way care will be delivered in the future will impact on the workforce as a consequence of patient requirements and funding issues. This article considers these and other factors in the context of the current and future workforce.
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The numbers of people affected by large-scale disasters has increased in recent decades. Disasters produce a huge burden of surgical morbidity at a time when the affected country is least able to respond. For this reason an international disaster response is often required. ⋯ A classification system for responding Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) and a set of agreed minimum standards has been defined. This review outlines the scope of the role of the anaesthetist in a Level 2 field hospital and some of the challenges that this scope and context present. It focuses mainly on natural disasters, but also outline some of the differences encountered in responding to other global disasters such as conflict and infectious outbreaks, and concludes with some of the challenges for the future.
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Blood lactate is a strong predictor of mortality, and repeated blood lactate assays are recommended during surgery in high-risk patients. We hypothesized that the use of intravascular microdialysis incorporated in a central venous catheter would be interchangeable with the reference blood gas technique to monitor changes in blood lactate. ⋯ NCT02296593.
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Development targets in anaesthetic pharmacology have evolved from minimizing harm caused by unwanted effects through an era in which rapid onset and offset of drug effect were prioritised. Today's anaesthetists have access to a library of effective drugs whose characteristics offer controllable hypnosis, analgesia and paralysis with manageable off-target effects. ⋯ Recently, questions around neonatal neurotoxicity, delirium and postoperative cognitive dysfunction have stimulated research to characterise these phenomena and explain them in mechanistic terms. Emergent basic science from these enquiries together with exploration of possible effects of anaesthetic drug choice on patient outcomes from cancer surgery may yield new targets for drug discovery.