Articles: postoperative.
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Variance in pain after total knee and hip arthroplasty may be due to a number of procedural and peripheral factors but also, in some individuals, to aberrant central pain processing as is described in conditions like fibromyalgia. To test this hypothesis, the authors conducted a prospective, observational cohort study of patients undergoing lower-extremity joint arthroplasty. ⋯ The use of the survey criteria for fibromyalgia led to the finding of distinct phenotypic differences, and the measure was independently predictive of opioid consumption. This self-report measure may provide an additional simple means of predicting postoperative pain outcomes and analgesic requirements. Future studies are needed to determine whether tailored therapies can improve postoperative pain control in this population.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2013
Airway exchange failure and complications with the use of the cook airway exchange catheter®: a single center cohort study of 1177 patients.
There are limited data on rates of failure and airway injury with the use of airway exchange catheters. We performed a single-center retrospective analysis of airway exchange catheters to determine the incidence and associated factors for tube exchange failure and airway injury. ⋯ Pneumothorax was noted after 1.5% of attempted tube exchanges. Difficult tube exchange was encountered in 6 of 8 patients with pneumothorax.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Dec 2013
Comparative StudyAnesthetic induction with etomidate, rather than propofol, is associated with increased 30-day mortality and cardiovascular morbidity after noncardiac surgery.
Because etomidate impairs adrenal function and blunts the cortisol release associated with surgical stimulus, we hypothesized that patients induced with etomidate suffer greater mortality and morbidity than comparable patients induced with propofol. ⋯ Etomidate was associated with a substantially increased risk for 30-day mortality, cardiovascular morbidity, and prolonged hospital stay. Our conclusions, especially on 30-day mortality, are robust to a strong unmeasured binary confounding variable. Although our study showed only an association between etomidate use and worse patients' outcomes but not causal relationship, clinicians should use etomidate judiciously, considering that improved hemodynamic stability at induction may be accompanied by substantially worse longer-term outcomes.
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We investigated changes in concentrations of interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumour necrosis factor-α and bradykinin in blood during passage through a cell salvage device and a leucocyte depletion filter, with or without application of subatmospheric pressure across the filter. Blood samples from 19 healthy women undergoing scheduled caesarean section showed concentrations of cytokines and bradykinin in blood filtered under gravity flow that were equal to or significantly lower than those of pre-operative venous blood samples. They were also significantly lower than that in postoperative orthopaedic shed blood, which is commonly reinfused after orthopaedic surgery. ⋯ We suggest that use of a leucocyte depletion filter for cell-salvaged blood with gravity flow is likely to be safe with regard to concentrations of cytokines and bradykinin. However, this may not hold true for the filter used with subatmospheric pressure. If transfusion of salvaged blood using a leucocyte depletion filter seems to induce hypotension, elevation of interleukin-6 should be suspected.