Articles: general-anesthesia.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Hypoventilation in the PACU is associated with hypoventilation in the surgical ward: Post-hoc analysis of a randomized clinical trial.
To evaluate the association between early postoperative hypoventilation in the last hour of the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) stay and hypoventilation during the rest of the first 48 postoperative hours in the surgical ward. ⋯ In adults recovering from abdominal surgery, events of hypoventilation during the first postoperative hour are associated with similar events during the rest of the first 48 postoperative hours, with positive predictive value approaching 100%. Sixty-one patients had ward hypoventilation that was not preceded by hypoventilation in PACU.
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Whilst the general presumption of the public is that general anaesthesia prevents awareness of any sensory stimuli, Lennertz and colleagues have shown in this issue of the British Journal of Anaesthesia that 11% of young adults were able to respond to auditory commands when neuromuscular blocking drugs were prevented from reaching one arm using the isolated forearm technique. This occurred with anaesthetic regimens that followed usual clinical practice in each of the 10 countries that enrolled patients, and it was significantly more common in women than in men. This high incidence demands attention. Further characterisation of the experience of these patients is essential to our understanding of the state of general anaesthesia.
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The clinical actions of sugammadex have been well studied, but the detailed molecular mechanism of the drug encapsulation process has not been systematically documented. The hypothesis was that sugammadex would attract rocuronium and vecuronium via interaction with the sugammadex side-chain "tentacles," as previously suggested. ⋯ Computational simulations demonstrate the dynamics of neuromuscular blocking drug encapsulation by sugammadex occurring from the opposite direction to that hypothesized and also how high concentrations of unbound sugammadex can potentially weakly bind to other drugs given during general anesthesia.
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Although the analgesic effects of ether were conclusively established during a series of public demonstrations of anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846, ether anesthesia was neither immediately nor universally introduced into practice. Betsey Magoun, the fourth patient undergoing surgery under anesthesia at the hospital, suffered life-threatening hypoxia and respiratory complications. Severe intraoperative problems witnessed by large audience may have contributed to the cautious introduction of anesthesia into routine practice. Ether inhalation was not commonly used until more effective methods of induction and maintenance of anesthesia were discovered.