Awareness during general anaesthesia is a rare but significant problem that can be frightening to the patients. We suggest that newer generation monitors should include this facility to provide a low alarm limit to MAC settings so as to improve the quality of patient care. Also we suggest that a "near empty" alarm be incorporated into vaporizers which can warn the anaesthesiologist prior to development of possible light plane of anaesthesia. We hope that adopting these two features can help enhance patient safety and can further aid in quality assurance.
Goneppanavar Umesh, Kaur Jasvinder, and Nanda Shetty.
Department of Anaesthesiology, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, Karnataka, India. drumeshg@yahoo.co.in
J Clin Monit Comput. 2009 Jun 1;23(3):185-6.
AbstractAwareness during general anaesthesia is a rare but significant problem that can be frightening to the patients. We suggest that newer generation monitors should include this facility to provide a low alarm limit to MAC settings so as to improve the quality of patient care. Also we suggest that a "near empty" alarm be incorporated into vaporizers which can warn the anaesthesiologist prior to development of possible light plane of anaesthesia. We hope that adopting these two features can help enhance patient safety and can further aid in quality assurance.