Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jan 2011
Objective Structured Clinical Examination-based assessment of regional anesthesia skills: the Israeli National Board Examination in Anesthesiology experience.
Simulation techniques are increasingly being used in anesthesia training programs and to a lesser extent in evaluation of residents. We describe 7 years of experience with Objective Structured Clinical Examination-based regional anesthesia assessment in the Israeli National Board Examinations in Anesthesiology. We believe this is the first use of such mock scenarios for the assessment of regional anesthesia for the important purpose of national accreditation. ⋯ The interrater correlation for total, critical, and global scores were 0.84, 0.88, and 0.75, respectively. Technological and cost constraints preclude actual assessment of regional anesthesia. However, testing formats that more closely reflect clinical practice are potentially valuable adjuncts to traditional examinations.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jan 2011
Comparative StudyAccurate classification of difficult intubation by computerized facial analysis.
Bedside airway evaluation is conduced before anesthesia, but all current methods perform modestly, with low sensitivity and positive predictive value. We hypothesized that subjective features of patients' anatomies improve anesthesiologists' ability to predict difficult intubation, and derived a computer model to do so, based on analysis of photographs of patients' faces. ⋯ Computerized analysis of facial structure and thyromental distance can classify easy versus difficult intubation with accuracy significantly outperforming popular clinical predictive tests.