Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2008
Case ReportsUltra-low dose ketamine and memantine treatment for pain in an opioid-tolerant oncology patient.
Patients taking high-dose opioids chronically for tumor-related or neuropathic pain may develop pain that is refractory to opioids. One option for control of such pain is the use of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine. ⋯ The patient was then successfully transitioned to oral memantine for long-term outpatient management, in a novel use of this oral NMDA receptor antagonist. We present recent findings from basic research on pain mechanisms to explain why opioid tolerance, as in this patient, may contribute to the analgesic benefit of NMDA receptor antagonists.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2008
Biography Historical ArticleGaston Labat's Regional Anesthesia: the missing years.
Gaston Labat's textbook Regional Anesthesia: Its Technique and Clinical Application was one of the earliest regional anesthesia texts, and certainly one of the most successful. Although Dr. Labat was working on a third edition at the time of his death, its fate and the reason for a more than 30-year delay in publishing a third edition have often been speculated upon. ⋯ Lundy Archive revealed communications between Dr. Lundy and Labat's widow which help explain the delay. Further searches into the collections of John Adriani, MD, help explain how he came to be the one to publish the long-awaited third edition.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2008
Randomized Controlled TrialPulmonary cytokine responses during mechanical ventilation of noninjured lungs with and without end-expiratory pressure.
Positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) during mechanical ventilation may impose different degrees of stress on healthy lungs. On the assumption that stress is reflected by cytokine production, we performed a translational study investigating the effect of PEEP on bronchoalveolar and systemic mediator levels in isolated perfused mouse lungs (IPL) and in patients with healthy lungs. ⋯ On the basis of the premise that cytokine levels may indicate mechanical stress, our findings indicate that even low tidal volume ventilation causes some stress. PEEP is beneficial at high inspiratory pressure, but imposes moderate stress at low inspiratory pressure.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2008
An instrument designed for faculty supervision evaluation by anesthesia residents and its psychometric properties.
We aimed 1) to develop a valid and reliable instrument for faculty supervision evaluation by anesthesia residents and 2) to disclose the sources of error in residents' ratings. ⋯ The nine-item instrument produced valid and reliable measures of faculty supervision. However, a significant amount of halo effect biased such measures. G-studies may help identify the type and magnitude of rater biases affecting resident-generated faculty supervision evaluations, and can be useful for interpreting their results, especially if personnel decisions (e.g., tenure, promotion) rely on such measures.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2008
Production of endothelin-1 and reduced blood flow in the rat kidney during lung-injurious mechanical ventilation.
The mechanisms by which mechanical ventilation (MV) can injure remote organs, such as the kidney, remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that upregulation of systemic inflammation, as reflected by plasma interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels, in response to a lung-injurious ventilatory strategy, ultimately results in kidney dysfunction mediated by local endothelin-1 (ET-1) production and renal vasoconstriction. ⋯ Lung-injurious MV for 4 h in healthy rats results in significant production of renal ET-1 and in decreased RBF, independent of IL-6. Decreased RBF has no observable effect on kidney function or histology.