Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2021
Developing a business case for a regional anesthesia block room: up with efficiency, down with costs.
Regional anesthesia techniques offer many benefits for total joint arthroplasty (TJA) patients. However, they require personnel and equipment resources, as well as valuable operating room (OR) time. A block room offers a dedicated environment to perform regional anesthesia procedures while potentially offsetting costs. ⋯ Implementing a regional anesthesia block room required a comprehensive business plan for securing the necessary resources to support the program. The regional anesthesia block room is a cost-effective method to improve patient care and OR efficiency.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2021
Randomized Controlled TrialComparison of continuous intravenous lidocaine versus transversus abdominis plane block for kidney transplant surgery: a randomized, non-inferiority trial.
Transversus abdominis plane (TAP) blocks are associated with an improvement in postoperative analgesia following kidney transplant surgery. However, these blocks carry inherent risk and require a degree of expertise to perform successfully. Continuous intravenous lidocaine may be an effective alternative. In this randomized, non-inferiority study, we hypothesized that a continuous lidocaine infusion provides similar postoperative analgesia to a TAP block. ⋯ This study demonstrates that a continuous infusion of lidocaine offers non-inferior postoperative analgesia compared with an ultrasound-guided unilateral, single-injection TAP block in the first 24 hours following kidney transplant surgery.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2021
Journey across epidemiology's third variables: an anesthesiologist's guide for successfully navigating confounding, mediation, and effect modification.
Observational clinical research studies aim to assess which exposures (treatments or other factors; independent variable) affect patient outcomes (dependent variable). These exposures include medical interventions in situations where clinical trials are not possible or prior to their conduct and completion. ⋯ Understanding these concepts is critical for assessing the design, analysis, and interpretation of clinical studies. These terms may be confusing to anesthesiologists and researchers alike, where such confusion could affect the conclusions of a clinical study, mislead the target audience, and ultimately impact patient health.
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Nov 2021
Waking Up in Pain: a prospective unselected cohort study of pain in 3702 patients immediately after surgery in the Danish Realm.
Acute and persistent pain after surgery is well described. However, no large-scale studies on immediate postoperative pain in the operating room (OR) exist, hindering potential areas of research to improve clinical outcomes. Thus, we aimed to describe the occurrence and severity of immediate postoperative pain in a large, unselected cohort. ⋯ Moderate or severe pain in the immediate postoperative phase occurred in 20% of all cases with procedure and anesthesiological technique variations, suggesting a need for identification of relevant procedure-specific risk factors and development of preventive treatments.