British journal of anaesthesia
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Optimal postoperative pain management is a prerequisite for enhancing functional recovery after surgery. However, many studies assessing analgesic interventions have limitations. Consequently, further improvements in study design are urgently needed. ⋯ Novel clinical trial designs should improve efficiency and enhance the likelihood of detecting relevant treatment effects. Cohort and database studies using propensity score matching and directed acyclic graphs could provide real-world generalisable information. Procedure-specific and patient-specific trials should allow identification of subpopulations most likely to benefit from a particular intervention after a specific surgical procedure and thus ascertain optimal analgesic strategies in challenging populations.
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The issue of potentially harmful effects of neurotoxicity or anaesthesia management on children undergoing general anaesthesia is still not resolved. Studies have so far been limited by methodological problems. In a retrospective cohort study, a new noninvasive method was used to demonstrate visual processing changes in children with a single previous exposure to anaesthesia. We need new noninvasive methods that can be used before and after exposure to anaesthesia and surgery to detemine possible effects on long-term neurodevelopment.
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Preoperative risk prediction is an important component of perioperative medicine. Machine learning is a powerful tool that could lead to increasingly complex risk prediction models with improved predictive performance. Careful consideration is required to guide the machine learning approach to ensure appropriate decisions are made with regard to what we are trying to predict, when we are trying to predict it, and what we seek to do with the results.
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Editorial Review
Talk before they sleep: strategies for patient-centred communication in anaesthesiology.
Patient-physician communication is an integral part of daily anaesthetic practice. Although it is an undeniably powerful means of building a solid therapeutic alliance, several of its fundamental aspects are often overlooked, which can hinder successful communication in the preoperative period. We outline these underexploited elements by analysing the various phases of preoperative patient-physician interactions to provide the practising anaesthesiologist with a useful framework for achieving thoughtful and patient-centred communication.