British journal of anaesthesia
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We review the development of technology in anaesthesia over the course of the past century, from the invention of the Boyle apparatus to the modern anaesthetic workstation with artificial intelligence assistance. We define the operating theatre as a socio-technical system, being necessarily comprised of human and technological parts, the ongoing development of which has led to a reduction in mortality during anaesthesia by an order of four magnitudes over a century. The remarkable technological advances in anaesthesia have been accompanied by important paradigm shifts in the approach to patient safety, and we describe the inter-relationship between technology and the human work environment in the development of such paradigm shifts, including the systems approach and organisational resilience. A better understanding of emerging technological advances and their effects on patient safety will allow anaesthesia to continue to be a leader in both patient safety and in the design of equipment and workspaces.
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Editorial Comment
Volatile versus intravenous anaesthesia and perioperative neurocognitive disorders: anything to see here?
There is a potential differential effect of sevoflurane compared with propofol on postoperative delirium and other perioperative neurocognitive disorders. More generally, there are perhaps differences between volatile and intravenous anaesthetic agents in their possible impact on perioperative neurocognitive disorders. Strengths and limitations of a recent study in this journal and its contribution to our understanding of the impact of anaesthetic technique on perioperative neurocognitive disorders are discussed.
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Observational studies have shown associations between multi-site chronic pain (MCP) and cardiovascular disease. However, it remains unclear whether these associations are causal. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the causal associations between MCP and cardiovascular disease and identify possible mediators between them. ⋯ Our findings provide new insights into the role of multi-site chronic pain in cardiovascular disease. Additionally, we identified several modifiable risk factors for reducing cardiovascular disease.
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Perioperative benzodiazepine use is associated with decreased risk of intraoperative awareness but no increase in postoperative delirium unless compared with dexmedetomidine.
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Cao and colleagues present a follow-up analysis of a previous RCT among >1200 older adults (mean age 72 yr) undergoing cancer surgery, originally designed to evaluate the effect of propofol or sevoflurane general anaesthesia on delirium, here to evaluate the effect of anaesthetic technique on overall survival and recurrence-free survival. Neither anaesthetic technique conferred an advantage on oncological outcomes. We suggest that although it is entirely plausible that the observed results are truly robust neutral findings, the present study could be limited, like most published studies in the field, by its heterogeneity and understandable absence of underlying individual patient-specific tumour genomic data. We argue for a precision oncology approach to onco-anaesthesiology research that recognises that cancer is not one but rather many diseases and that tumour genomics (and multi-omics) is a fundamental determinant relating drugs to longer-term outcomes.