Anesthesia and analgesia
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Mar 2012
Comparative StudyMinimum alveolar concentration of sevoflurane in rabbits with liver fibrosis.
Sevoflurane is widely used in patients undergoing surgical procedures, which could affect both the liver function and hepatic blood flow. However, the effects of liver fibrosis on minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) of sevoflurane are still unclear. Therefore, we designed this study to determine the MAC of sevoflurane in rabbits with liver fibrosis. ⋯ The MAC of sevoflurane decreased significantly in rabbits with liver fibrosis.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Mar 2012
PT-SAFE: a software tool for development and annunciation of medical audible alarms.
Recent reports by The Joint Commission as well as the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation have indicated that medical audible alarm effectiveness needs to be improved. Several recent studies have explored various approaches to improving the audible alarms, motivating the authors to develop real-time software capable of comparing such alarms. We sought to devise software that would allow for the development of a variety of audible alarm designs that could also integrate into existing operating room equipment configurations. The software is meant to be used as a tool for alarm researchers to quickly evaluate novel alarm designs. ⋯ These results suggest that this software tool provides a foundation for rapidly staging multiple audible alarm sets from the laboratory to a simulation environment for the purpose of evaluating novel alarm designs, thus producing valuable findings for medical audible alarm standardization.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Mar 2012
Comparative StudyIntrathecal catheterization influences tolerance to chronic morphine in rats.
We evaluated the antinociceptive effects of acute and chronic morphine administered spinally via lumbar puncture in intrathecally catheterized and sham-surgery rats. The effects of acute morphine did not differ between groups. ⋯ Spinal astrogliosis, determined by measurement of 3-dimensional cell volumes, was observed in catheterized rats as indicated by significantly larger cell volumes compared with surgery-naive controls. Gliosis induced by chronic intrathecal morphine administered to surgery-naive animals was comparable to that observed in saline-treated catheterized rats.