IMPLICATIONS: Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) appears to induce transcription of pro- and antiapoptotic genes in the rat brain, but caspase-mediated apoptosis itself does not appear to be activated. Elucidating the molecular biological sequelae of CPB may aid in the understanding of the pathophysiology of cardiac surgery-associated cerebral injury and, in doing so, may be useful in identifying potential therapeutic targets for pharmacologic neuroprotection.
IMPLICATIONS: We examined the effects of rewarming rate on internal jugular venous oxygen hemoglobin saturation in diabetic and nondiabetic patients during the rewarming period and long-term cognitive outcome. Slow rewarming could not prevent the frequency of the reduction in internal jugular venous oxygen hemoglobin saturation and adverse cognitive outcome in diabetic patients.
IMPLICATIONS: A retrospective cohort study demonstrated an association between adverse events after a protamine administration and increased in-hospital mortality.
IMPLICATIONS: Insertion of pulmonary artery catheters (PACs) before the induction of anesthesia requires more needle sticks and takes longer than insertion after the induction of anesthesia; moreover, previous PAC insertion has no significant effect on hemodynamics or use of vasoactive drugs or IV fluid associated with the induction of anesthesia.
IMPLICATIONS: The increase in body temperature (BT) is predictable during radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of liver tumors under general anesthesia. Close observation of total output energy delivered and BT are required, and preparation of cooling measures is important, in RFA of liver tumors.
IMPLICATIONS: Propofol depresses contractile function of left atrial (LA) myocardium, impairs mechanical matching between the LA and the left ventricular (LV), and reduces the active LA contribution to LV filling in vivo. Compensatory decreases in chamber stiffness contribute to relative maintenance of LA reservoir function during the administration of propofol.
IMPLICATIONS: Calcium-sensitizing drugs, such as levosimendan, are a novel class of drug therapy for heart-failure treatment. The lung circulation affects both right- and left-sided heart failure. Levosimendan decreased lobar arterial pressure via a partial K+ATP (potassium channel sensitive to intracellular adenosine triphosphate levels)-dependent mechanism. These data suggest that, in addition to calcium-sensitizing activity, levosimendan decreases pulmonary resistance, which may also aid in the treatment of heart failure.
IMPLICATIONS: Dexmedetomidine may not directly affect smooth muscle in human peripheral resistance vessels within the usual range of plasma concentrations (<10-7 mol/L) achieved in clinical practice. However, in large doses, it could enhance the response to nonadrenergic vasoconstrictor agonists while antagonizing the vasoconstrictor response to {alpha}1-adrenoceptor agonists.
IMPLICATIONS: The authors report the intraoperative diagnosis using transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) of an unsuspected myxoma in a patient admitted for an acute occlusion of the aorta, resulting in emergency excision of the atrial tumor. This observation illustrates the usefulness of intraoperative TEE examination to identify life-threatening pathology.
IMPLICATIONS: This case describes pain in the ear resulting from inadvertent placement of a subclavian dialysis catheter into the ipsilateral internal jugular vein. The pain subsided when the catheter was withdrawn.
IMPLICATIONS: Birth defects can affect the great vessels of the aorta and its branches, compressing the upper airway and the swallowing track. Surgical repair of these defects requires manipulating the airway to improve surgical exposure. This is a report of a series of cases with compromised airway resulting from such a birth defect and methods of its management.
IMPLICATIONS: Ropivacaine is a new long-acting amino-amide local anesthetic. The concentrations of ropivacaine used in caudal analgesia ranged from 0.1% to 0.5%. This study determined the minimum local analgesic concentration of ropivacaine to establish effective caudal analgesia under general anesthesia with 0.5 minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration enflurane in children.
IMPLICATIONS: Oral tramadol 1-2 mg/kg is well tolerated and effective in postoperative children ready to transition from morphine patient-controlled analgesia. The group receiving 2 mg/kg required less rescue analgesic compared with those receiving 1 mg/kg.
IMPLICATIONS: The relationship between bispectral index (BIS) and purposeful intraoperative patient movement is consistent with previous BIS utility studies. We conclude that BIS may be a useful clinical monitor for predicting patient movement to command during the intraoperative wake-up test, particularly when controlled hypotension is used and hemodynamic responses to emergence of anesthesia are blunted.
IMPLICATIONS: Separate dose-response relationships for oral clonidine were found regarding the hypnotic and analgesic effects in children undergoing sevoflurane anesthesia.
IMPLICATIONS: Iontophoresis is a technique that uses an electrical current to facilitate movement of solute ions (lidocaine) across the stratum corneum barrier to provide dermal analgesia. Lidocaine iontophoresis provides similar pain relief for insertion of IV catheters as eutectic mixture of local anesthetics and is a useful noninvasive alternative to establish dermal analgesia for venous cannulation.
IMPLICATIONS: Patients who listen to music of their choice during the preoperative period report less anxiety.
IMPLICATIONS: Neither nicotinic nor muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonists altered spinal cord actions of isoflurane, suggesting that these receptors have little role in isoflurane actions in spinal cord. Cholinergic receptors thus may be eliminated as molecular targets in determining the anesthetic end-point of immobility in response to a noxious stimulus (minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration).
IMPLICATIONS: Inhaled anesthetics produce two crucial effects: amnesia and immobility in the face of noxious stimulation. Block of muscarinic and neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in rats does not significantly decrease the isoflurane concentration required to suppress movement to stimulation. Thus, acetylcholine receptors do not seem to play a major role as mediators of the immobilization produced by inhaled anesthetics. Their capacity to mediate other effects of inhaled anesthetics (e.g., amnesia) remains to be tested.
IMPLICATIONS: Sildenafil may reduce the dose of sodium nitroprusside required to induce deliberate hypotension and hence the potential for cyanide toxicity.
IMPLICATIONS: In anesthetized pigs, short-term inhalation of xenon or nitrous oxide over 4 h when compared with total IV anesthesia had no additional deleterious effects on the metabolic balance of the gut wall during intestinal obstruction, no matter whether the arterial blood flow was reduced or not.
IMPLICATIONS: We compared the efficacy of ondansetron, lidocaine, tramadol, and fentanyl in minimizing the pain on injection of rocuronium in 250 patients. Ondansetron, lidocaine, tramadol, and fentanyl were effective in preventing and decreasing the level of rocuronium injection pain. Among these drugs, lidocaine was the most effective, and fentanyl was the least effective.
IMPLICATIONS: By using automated data collection, 5 (chronic alcohol consumption, history of hypertension, body mass index, sensory block height, and urgency of surgery) of 29 variables could be detected as having an association with hypotension after spinal anesthesia induction. The knowledge of these risk factors should be useful in increasing vigilance in those patients most at risk for hypotension, in allowing a more timely therapeutic intervention, or even in suggesting the use of alternative methods of spinal anesthesia, such as titrated continuous or small-dose spinal anesthesia.
IMPLICATIONS: This experiment identified a significant, dose-dependent decrease in bispectral index (BIS), 95% spectral edge frequency, heart rate, and mean arterial blood pressure with increasing remifentanil dose. The change in baseline BIS was relatively modest but significant, suggesting that remifentanil has some sedative/hypnotic properties, or that it potentiates the hypnotic effect of propofol.
IMPLICATIONS: This article discusses the inherent danger of general anesthesia and the need for a variety of tools to safely manage the airway.
IMPLICATIONS:Intermittent motor dysfunction is a clinical symptom associated with partial spinal compression. The present study provides evidence that oral treatment with the prostaglandin E1 analog (OP-1206 {alpha}-CD) is effective in improving motor dysfunction and spinal cord blood flow in rats with spinal compression.
IMPLICATIONS:Hydromorphone and buprenorphine are two important drugs used for pain relief. We observed that intrathecal buprenorphine is 17 times more potent than hydromorphone to inhibit pain in rats. Both drugs exert their effects through specific spinal opioid receptors.
IMPLICATIONS: Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter of the descending pathways that down-modulate spinal nociception. In postoperative pain, ondansetron, a selective 5-HT3 receptor antagonist, increased the analgesic dose of tramadol. We suggest that, when antagonized for antiemetic purpose, 5-HT3 receptors foster nociception, because of their site-dependent action.
IMPLICATIONS: Oral Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, can be used to treat restless legs syndrome. A mechanism for the efficacy of this treatment is discussed.
IMPLICATIONS: We compared two different training simulators (computer screen-based versus full-scale) for training anesthesia residents to better document the effectiveness of such devices as training tools. This is an important issue, given the extensive use and the high cost of mannequin-based simulators in anesthesiology.
IMPLICATIONS: We found that acute severe vision impairment adversely affects the anesthesiologist's ability to intubate the trachea. This implies that anesthesiologists with acute onset of severe visual handicaps might have more difficulty intubating the trachea, which could initiate more critical incidents.
IMPLICATIONS: Assisted spontaneous breathing may have beneficial effects on gas exchange in acute lung injury. We tested this hypothesis for pressure support ventilation in an animal model of acute lung injury. Our results demonstrate that pressure support does not necessarily provide better gas exchange than controlled mechanical ventilation.
IMPLICATIONS:Repeated closing and reopening of lung units induced by negative end-expiratory pressure resulted in lung inflammation and cell injury even under mechanical ventilation using a normal tidal volume. This finding may have clinical relevance in certain patients who are prone to atelectasis during mechanical ventilation.
IMPLICATIONS: We report a case of toxicity from the drug solvent propylene glycol resulting from prolonged, large-dose lorazepam infusion. The case is unusual in that toxicity developed during continuous veno-venous hemofiltration with dialysis, a renal replacement therapy that should been have been effective at eliminating the chemical and its metabolites.
IMPLICATIONS: We investigated in humans whether changes in spinal motor neuron excitability correlate with the predicted propofol concentration (Cpt) achieved by a target-controlled infusion system. Propofol suppressed F-wave persistence in a Cpt-dependent manner, indicating that propofol depresses spinal motor neuron excitability at clinically relevant concentrations.
IMPLICATIONS: Our retrospective analysis of central neuraxial techniques, both epidural and spinal anesthesia, noted a significant success rate in the setting of previously failed external cephalic version attempts.
IMPLICATIONS: We report the case of a pregnant patient who developed severe pulmonary edema secondary to beta-adrenergic agonist tocolytic therapy (salbutamol) and was successfully treated with mask-delivered continuous positive airway pressure ventilation.
IMPLICATIONS: We describe the anesthetic management of a parturient with compound heterozygous medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, the most common disorder of fatty acid metabolism.
IMPLICATIONS: Epidural epinephrine markedly improves the pain relief and sensory blockade of a small-dose thoracic epidural infusion of ropivacaine and fentanyl. Nausea was reduced, and mobilization of the patients was facilitated.
IMPLICATIONS: Lumbar plexus depth is correlated with the patient's body mass index and differs between men and women, but this is not true of the lumbar plexus-transverse process distance. Considering new landmarks, a continuous psoas compartment block promotes optimal analgesia after hip arthroplasty, with few side effects.
IMPLICATIONS: We examined the effect of epidural morphine on the onset of tourniquet pain during epidural lidocaine anesthesia. We found that the addition of 2 mg of morphine to epidural 2% lidocaine significantly delayed the onset of tourniquet pain without increasing morphine-related side effects.
IMPLICATIONS: Small-dose propofol sedation, compared with IV midazolam, attenuates free radical production after release of the tourniquet during total knee replacement under spinal anesthesia.
IMPLICATIONS: Manipulating the density of local anesthetic solutions by using a simple formula may be clinically useful in producing optimal density solutions for spinal anesthesia under a variety of clinical conditions.
IMPLICATIONS: We describe a patient with frontal hygroma after spinal anesthesiaa rare complication. This condition should be considered in patients after spinal anesthesia with persisting orthostatic headache. Risk factors include ventriculo-peritoneal shunt or brain atrophy caused by old age.
IMPLICATIONS: This prospective study investigated preoperative variables that are predictive of postoperative delirium in geriatric patients undergoing surgical repair of hip fracture. The results suggest that the patient's preoperative medical condition and inability to mount a stress response influence postoperative delirium.
IMPLICATIONS: We compared emboli formation after tourniquet release in patients undergoing arthroscopic reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL, n = 20) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA, n = 20) using transesophageal echocardiography. The present data suggest that the risk of acute pulmonary embolism after tourniquet release could be more frequent during TKA than ACL.
IMPLICATIONS: A meta-analytical review of studies using hypnosis with surgical patients was performed to determine the effectiveness of the procedure. The results indicated that patients in hypnosis treatment groups had better clinical outcomes than 89% of patients in control groups. These data strongly support the use of hypnosis with surgical patients.
IMPLICATIONS: Upright posture attenuates the thermogenic response to core hypothermia but augments peripheral vasoconstriction. This divergent result suggests that input from the baroreceptor modifies the individual thermoregulatory efferent pathway at a site distal to the common thermoregulatory center or neural pathway.
IMPLICATIONS: A prospective clinical investigation revealed that a marked systolic blood pressure decrease >35% ({Delta}SBP >35%) during the induction of general anesthesia is associated with an increased incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV). The association between a {Delta}SBP >35% during maintenance of general anesthesia and PONV is less pronounced.
IMPLICATIONS: Partial upper airway obstruction during spontaneous respiration with a ProSealTM laryngeal mask airway can result in gastric distention.
IMPLICATIONS: Nasogastric tube placement can cause ulceration and bleeding from the nose, pharynx, esophagus, and stomach. Its accidental placement into the tracheopulmonary system may lead to pneumothorax, hemothorax, or even death. We report a case of its knotting over the epiglottis, leading to life-threatening respiratory distress.
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