Authors: Glenn S. Murphy, M.D. etal
Anesthesiology
10 2016, Vol.125, 611-614
BY the late 1980s, it was well recognized that undetected postoperative residual neuromuscular block (PRNB) was a common occurrence in most postanesthesia care units (PACUs).1–4 However, an editorial in 1989 noted that there was little, if any, objective evidence to validate the hypothesis that PRNB was associated with long-term or even transient adverse respiratory outcomes.5 In the two and a half decades since the editorial by Miller5 was published, outcome data regarding this important patient safety issue have slowly accumulated, but the relevant database remains quite sparse. In this issue of Anesthesiology, Bulka et al.6 provide an important addition to the small list of studies that attempt to examine the long-term consequences of PRNB. They report two main findings: (1) the use of neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) was associated with a higher absolute rate of postoperative pneumonia (POP) when compared to matched cases where patients did not receive relaxants and (2) failure to reverse NMBAs at the end of surgery was associated with a 2.25-fold increase in the incidence of POP. Why should these findings be less than surprising?
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