Empty blood units piled on the operating room floor after a trauma. A large retrospective analysis has uncovered a previously unnoticed linear relationship between mortality and units of blood transfused, namely, that there is a 10% increase in mortality for every additional 10 units of blood transfused—what has been dubbed “the 50/50 rule.” Morbidities were […]
Read MoreVery Large Database Finds: Anesthesiologists are working harder to better understand preoperative risks that may influence perioperative care. According to one intriguing study of surgical risks, preoperative low blood pressure—as opposed to high blood pressure—is a risk factor for death. The study, conducted by researchers in the United States and United Kingdom, looked at data […]
Read MoreA collaborative, checklist-driven, multimodal protocol called the ComfortSafe anesthetic technique can provide effective postoperative pain relief and enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) while preventing complications associated with opioid analgesics. Getting anesthesiologists to adopt a less narcotic-heavy view of analgesia has become a crusade for one of the researchers who devised the protocol. “We’ve been using […]
Read MoreContinued use of beta-blockers for hypertension during noncardiac surgery can raise the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and all-cause mortality within 30 days in a relatively low-risk population, suggests new research that is in line with earlier studies that generally included higher-risk patients. A Danish cohort of more than 55,000 low-risk hypertension patients […]
Read MoreAnesth Analg 2015 Dec;121(6):1640-54. Authors: Baeriswyl M et al BACKGROUND: Previous meta-analyses of the transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block have examined a maximum of 12 articles, including fewer than 650 participants, and have not examined the effect of ultrasound-guided techniques specifically. Recently, many trials that use ultrasound approaches to TAP block have been published, which report conflicting […]
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