British journal of anaesthesia
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Editorial Review
Safety improvement requires data: the case for automation and artificial intelligence during incident reporting.
The reporting of incidents has a long association with safety in healthcare and anaesthesia, yet many incident reporting systems substantially under-report critical events. Better understanding the underlying reasons for low levels of critical incident reporting can allow such factors to be addressed systematically to arrive at a better reporting culture. However, new forms of automation in anaesthesia also provide powerful new approaches to be adopted in the future.
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Editorial Review
Hyperfibrinolysis: potential guidance for decision-making to avoid futile extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is associated with very poor outcomes. Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (eCPR) for selected patients is a potential therapeutic option for refractory cardiac arrest. However, randomised controlled studies applying eCPR after refractory OHCA have demonstrated conflicting results regarding survival and good functional neurological outcomes. eCPR is an invasive, labour-intensive, and expensive therapeutic approach with associated side-effects. ⋯ Studies in trauma patients demonstrate a high mortality rate in those with established hyperfibrinolysis upon emergency room admission. Similar findings have now been reported for the first time in OHCA patients. Hyperfibrinolysis upon admission diagnosed by rotational thromboelastometry was strongly associated with mortality and poor neurological outcomes in a small cohort of patients treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
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Cerebrovascular autoregulation is defined as the capacity of cerebral blood vessels to maintain stable cerebral blood flow despite changing blood pressure. It is assessed using the pressure reactivity index (the correlation coefficient between mean arterial blood pressure and intracranial pressure). The objective of this scoping review is to describe the existing evidence concerning the association of EEG and cerebrovascular autoregulation in order to identify key concepts and detect gaps in the current knowledge. ⋯ There is a paucity of studies evaluating the link between EEG and cerebrovascular autoregulation. The studies identified included a variety of EEG and cerebrovascular autoregulation acquisition methods, age groups, and diseases allowing for few overarching conclusions. However, the preliminary evidence for the presence of an association between EEG metrics and cerebrovascular autoregulation prompts further in-depth investigations.
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Perioperative anaphylaxis is a serious and often life-threatening immediate hypersensitivity reaction. There are few published data on paediatric perioperative anaphylaxis (pPOA). We evaluated the incidence of and risk factors involved in the occurrence of pPOA within a large US national database. ⋯ The incidence of pPOA was one in 12,125 cases. Risk factors included age, procedure type, and comorbidities.
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Guideline adherence in the medical field leaves room for improvement. Digitalised decision support helps improve compliance. However, the complex nature of the guidelines makes implementation in clinical practice difficult. ⋯ NCT04058769.