Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Aug 2005
Changing patterns in the acute pain service: epidural versus patient-controlled analgesia.
This study involved an audit and a survey of the Acute Pain Service at Princess Alexandra Hospital. It was found in the audit that the relative choice of epidural analgesia had declined by 50% over the five-year time period of 1998-2003. ⋯ Two of the most common reasons given for this change in practice related to fear of litigation (34%) and lack of evidence (21%). These results show that within this department approaches to postoperative pain control had changed and that this appears to have resulted from factors such as the medicolegal environment and the possible influence of evidence based medicine.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Aug 2005
Randomized Controlled TrialPatient-controlled epidural analgesia following combined spinal-epidural analgesia in labour: the effects of adding a continuous epidural infusion.
Patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) is used to maintain epidural analgesia following initial intrathecal analgesia. This trial investigated whether a continuous background infusion with PCEA provides superior analgesia to PCEA alone among patients who received combined spinal-epidural (CSE) analgesia during labour Eighty parturients were randomized to either PCEA alone (PCEA) or PCEA with a background infusion of ropivacaine 0.15% with sufentanil 0.75 microg/ml at 2 ml/h (PCEA + CEI). PCEA settings were a bolus of 4 ml of the same analgesic solution with a lockout interval of 15 minutes. ⋯ Consumption of local anaesthetic (excluding manually administered boluses) was similar between the groups. If anaesthetist-administered boluses were included, more local anaesthetic was consumed by the PCEA group (47.1 +/- 19.4 mg vs 35.6 +/- 12.0 mg in the PCEA + CEI group, P<0.05). We conclude that PCEA with a background infusion provides effective analgesia with less anaesthetist workload and reduced local anaesthetic consumption as compared with PCEA without a background infusion.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Aug 2005
Clinical TrialAssessment of diaphragmatic function with cervical magnetic stimulation in critically ill patients.
The objective of this study was to evaluate a non-volitional measurement to assess diaphragmatic function in intubated and mechanically ventilated patients in a prospective pilot interventional clinical trial. The study was conducted in an 18-bed postoperative intensive care unit based at a university hospital. Patients were prospectively assigned to two groups. ⋯ Patients with weaning failure have significantly lower twitch pressure at the endotracheal tube suggesting diaphragmatic dysfunction. Twitch pressure at the endotracheal tube may be a useful parameter to screen for diaphragmatic dysfunction in intubated critically ill patients. Further studies are needed to confirm these preliminary findings.