Anesthesiology
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Review Multicenter Study
Perioperative glycemic control: an evidence-based review.
Hyperglycemia in perioperative patients has been identified as a risk factor for morbidity and mortality. Intensive insulin therapy (IIT) has been shown to reduce morbidity and mortality among the critically ill, decrease infection rates and improve survival after cardiac surgery, and improve outcomes in acute neurologic injury and acute myocardial infarction. ⋯ We conclude that while avoidance of hyperglycemia is clearly beneficial, the appropriate glucose target and specific subpopulations who might benefit from IIT have yet to be identified. Given the potential for harm, inclusion of glucose targets in national quality benchmarks is premature.
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Previous studies have failed to detect high body mass index (BMI) as a risk factor for difficult tracheal intubation (DTI). BMI was investigated as a risk factor for DTI in patients planned for direct laryngoscopy. ⋯ High BMI is a weak but statistically significant predictor of difficult and failed intubation and may be more appropriate than weight in multivariate models of prediction of DTI.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Factor XIII substitution in surgical cancer patients at high risk for intraoperative bleeding.
Excessive intraoperative bleeding is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The authors and others have shown that fibrin monomer allows preoperative risk stratification for intraoperative blood loss, likely due to an imbalance between available factor XIII and prothrombin conversion. The authors hypothesized that the use of factor XIII would delay the decrease of clot firmness in high-risk patients. ⋯ This proof of concept study confirms the hypothesis that patients at high risk for intraoperative blood loss show reduced loss of clot firmness when factor XIII is administered early during surgery. Further clinical trials are needed to assess relevant clinical endpoints such as blood loss, loss of other coagulation factors, and use of blood products.
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Rapid infusion of lipid emulsion has been proposed to treat local anesthetic toxicity. The authors wanted to test the buffering properties of two commercially available emulsions made of long- and of long- and medium-chain triglycerides. ⋯ The solubility of long-acting local anesthetics in lipid emulsions and the high capacity of binding of these emulsions most probably explain their clinical efficacy in case of toxicity. The long-chain triglyceride emulsion Intralipid appears to be about 2.5 times more efficacious than the 50/50 medium-chain/long-chain Medialipide emulsion. Also, because of their higher hydrophobicity, racemic bupivacaine and levobupivacaine seem to clear more rapidly than ropivacaine.
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Nitric oxide is known to be essential for early anesthetic preconditioning (APC) and ischemic preconditioning (IPC) of myocardium. Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) regulates endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) activity. In this study, the authors tested the hypothesis that Hsp90-eNOS interactions modulate APC and IPC. ⋯ The results indicate that Hsp90 plays a critical role in mediating APC and IPC through protein-protein interactions, and suggest that endothelial cells are important contributors to nitric oxide-mediated signaling during APC.