• Can J Anaesth · Oct 2003

    Case Reports

    Venous air embolism during awake craniotomy in a supine patient.

    • Mrinalini Balki, Pirjo H Manninen, Glenn P McGuire, Hossam El-Beheiry, and Mark Bernstein.
    • Department of Anesthesia, The Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
    • Can J Anaesth. 2003 Oct 1;50(8):835-8.

    PurposeTo report a non-fatal case of intraoperative venous air embolism (VAE) during an awake craniotomy. VAE presented with unusual clinical features.Clinical FeaturesVAE during an awake craniotomy has not been reported frequently. The patient we describe presented with persistent coughing followed by tachypnea, hypoxia and reduction in end-tidal CO(2) during dural opening while undergoing an awake craniotomy in the supine position. Cardiovascular variables were stable during the episode except for transient hypertension. Having ruled out airway obstruction and low cardiac output, we concluded that air embolism was the cause. The patient responded immediately to the standard treatment of air embolism and recovered without any complication.ConclusionThis case illustrates a VAE during an awake craniotomy and emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis in the management.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…