Articles: cations.
-
Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Feb 2025
ReviewThe climate crisis - actions to prioritize for anaesthesiologists.
Climate change is the biggest threat to human health and survival in the twenty-first century. Emissions associated with healthcare contribute to climate change and there are many personal and professional actions that can reduce carbon emissions. This review highlights why action is necessary and what anaesthetists and healthcare workers can do. ⋯ This article shows that, while patient safety and quality of care must remain healthcare's top priority, considering the climate implications of care is part of that duty. Many actions that reduce the carbon impact of care simultaneously improve the quality of care and reduce financial cost. More research into sustainable healthcare is needed. Departments and hospitals and must create environments in which climate conversations are welcomed and can result in positive advancements.
-
Nearly 30 million, mostly rurally located Americans lack timely access to level I or II trauma center care, resulting in inefficient resource use and potentially preventable death. Although significant progress has been made in the care of the injured patient during the last few decades, rural trauma patients continue to face significant challenges in accessing high-quality trauma care with resultant outcomes disparities and increased expenditures associated with potentially avoidable interfacility transfers. ⋯ Although telehealth has been used in trauma with some success, it remains underused. Members of a 2023 American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma Spotlight Session on the role of teletrauma present an introduction to the applications, potential benefits, and future directions for telehealth use in trauma care.
-
Despite growing interest in how patient frailty affects outcomes (eg, in neuro-oncology), its role after transsphenoidal surgery for Cushing disease (CD) remains unclear. We evaluated the effect of frailty on CD outcomes using the Registry of Adenomas of the Pituitary and Related Disorders (RAPID) data set from a collaboration of US academic pituitary centers. ⋯ These results demonstrate that mild frailty predicts CD surgical outcomes and may inform preoperative risk stratification. Frailty-influenced outcomes other than age and tumor characteristics may be useful for prognostication. Future studies can help identify strategies to reduce disease burden for frail patients with hypercortisolemia.
-
Awake craniotomies with functional cortical mapping are performed to minimize post-operative deficits from the resection of lesions adjacent to eloquent cortex. The procedure is well-established in the adult patient population and is increasingly applied to well-selected pediatric patients. A review of recent literature demonstrated that the most commonly reported anesthetic techniques were "asleep-awake-asleep" protocols that relied on propofol, remifentanil, or fentanyl. ⋯ Awake craniotomies can safely be performed in the pediatric population with appropriate patient sel7ection, planning, and a multi-disciplinary approach.
-
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma has established a framework for trauma center quality improvement. Despite efforts, recent studies show persistent variation in patient outcomes across national trauma centers. We aimed to investigate whether risk-adjusted mortality varies at the hospital level and if high-performing centers demonstrate better adherence to ACS Verification, Review, and Consultation (VRC) program quality measures. ⋯ Significant variation in risk-adjusted mortality persists across trauma centers. Given the association between adherence to quality measures and high performance, multidisciplinary efforts to refine and implement guidelines are warranted.