Anesthesiology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Observational Study
CORRECTION OF TRAUMA-INDUCED COAGULOPATHY BY GOAL DIRECTED THERAPY: A SECONDARY ANALYSIS OF THE ITACTIC TRIAL.
Trauma hemorrhage induces a coagulopathy with a high associated mortality rate. The Implementing Treatment Algorithms for the Correction of Trauma Induced Coagulopathy (ITACTIC) randomized trial tested two goal-directed treatment algorithms for coagulation management: one guided by conventional coagulation tests and one by viscoelastic hemostatic assays (viscoelastic). The lack of a difference in 28-day mortality led the authors to hypothesize that coagulopathic patients received insufficient treatment to correct coagulopathy. ⋯ In ITACTIC, many bleeding trauma patients did not receive an indicated goal-directed treatment. Interventions arrived late during resuscitation and were only partially effective at correcting coagulopathy.
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During the past 70 years, patient safety science has evolved through four organizational frameworks known as Safety-0, Safety -1, Safety-2, and Safety-3. Their evolution reflects the realization over time that blaming people, chasing errors, fixing one-offs, and regulation would not create the desired patient safety. In Safety-0, the oldest framework, harm events arise from clinician failure; event prevention relies on better staffing, education, and basic standards. ⋯ Safety-2 emphasizes clinicians' adaptability to prevent harm events in an everchanging environment, using resilience engineering principles. Safety-3, used by aviation, adds system design and control elements to Safety-1 and Safety-2, deploying human factors, design-thinking, and operational control or feedback to prevent and respond to harm events. Safety-3 represents a potential way for anesthesia and perioperative care to become safer.
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Conscientious objection is a legally protected right of medical professionals to recuse themselves from patient care activities that conflict with their personal values. Anesthesiology is different from most specialties with respect to conscientious objection in that the focus is to facilitate safe, efficient, and successful performance of procedures by others, rather than to perform the treatment in question. ⋯ While some situations have clear grounds and precedent for conscientious objection (e.g., abortion, or futile procedures), newer procedures, such as gender-affirming surgery and xenotransplantation, may trigger conscientious objection for complex reasons. This review discusses ethical, legal, and practical aspects of conscientious objection; challenges to anesthesia groups, departments, and healthcare organizations when conscientious objection is invoked by anesthesiologists; and strategies to help mitigate the ethical dilemmas.