Anesthesiology clinics
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Hydroxyethyl starch (HES) 130/0.4 (Voluven, Fresenius/Hospira, Germany) is indicated for the treatment and prophylaxis of hypovolemia. As the Voluven molecule is smaller than those of other available hydroxyethyl starch products, it is associated with less plasma accumulation and can be safely used in patients with renal impairment. Previous studies have demonstrated that Voluven has comparable effects on volume expansion and hemodynamics as other available HES products. Voluven is also associated with fewer effects on coagulation and may be an acceptable alternative to albumin for volume expansion in situations in which other starches are contraindicated secondary to risk of coagulopathy.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Sep 2011
ReviewQuality improvement using automated data sources: the anesthesia quality institute.
The Anesthesia Quality Institute has created the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry to automatically capture electronic data specific to anesthesia cases. Data come from billing systems, quality management systems, hospital electronic health care records, and anesthesia information management systems. Aggregation of this data will allow for calculation of national and cohort-specific benchmarks for anesthesia outcomes of interest. Provision of this data to anesthesia practitioners through periodic private reports will motivate improvements in the quality of care.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Sep 2011
ReviewClinical research using an information system: the multicenter perioperative outcomes group.
Clinical research using electronic medical record (EMR) data is an emerging source of scientific progress. Increasingly, researchers are using retrospective observational data acquired from EMRs as the substrate for their clinical research into comorbidities, procedures, situations, and outcomes that have historically presented significant challenges. Although EMR data collection is perceived to require fewer resources than manual chart review, there are many specific regulatory, privacy, data quality, and technique issues unique to clinical research using EMR data. This article discusses the use of EMRs for observational research.
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Intelligent medical displays have the potential to improve patient outcomes by integrating multiple physiologic signals, exhibiting high sensitivity and specificity, and reducing information overload for physicians. Research findings have suggested that information overload and distractions caused by patient care activities and alarms generated by multiple monitors in acute care situations, such as the operating room and the intensive care unit, may produce situations that negatively impact the outcomes of patients under anesthesia. This can be attributed to shortcomings of human-in-the-loop monitoring and the poor specificity of existing physiologic alarms. Modern artificial intelligence techniques (ie, intelligent software agents) are demonstrating the potential to meet the challenges of next-generation patient monitoring and alerting.
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Anesthesia information management systems (AIMS) have become more prevalent as more sophisticated hardware and software have increased usability and reliability. National mandates and incentives have driven adoption as well. ⋯ Irrespective of the development model, the best AIMS have a feature set that allows for comprehensive management of workflow for an anesthesiologist. Key features include preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative documentation; quality assurance; billing; compliance and operational reporting; patient and operating room tracking; and integration with hospital electronic medical records.