Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Aug 1992
Experience with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in children more than one month old.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has been used at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, in the treatment of children with life-threatening respiratory or cardiac failure since May 1988. The main indications for its use are, first, the disease is thought to be reversible, second, the child will survive with an acceptable quality of life and, third, the child has an 80% chance of dying without ECMO. Seven of eighteen children receiving ECMO have survived to leave hospital, and all are functionally normal: these results are similar to international results. It would appear that ECMO is a useful therapy for some children with otherwise fatal cardiorespiratory failure.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · May 1992
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialEfficacy of lignocaine in alleviating potassium chloride infusion pain.
A double-blind study was set up to investigate the effect of pretreatment with lignocaine on the incidence of potassium chloride infusion pain. Twenty-eight patients were randomly allocated into two equal groups. Patients in both groups were hypokalaemic and were scheduled for replacement consisting of potassium chloride 20 mmol diluted to 100 ml in dextrose 5% solution administered over two hours. ⋯ The incidence of potassium chloride infusion pain was significantly reduced in Group A. There was no adverse effect reported. This study demonstrates the efficacy of bolus dose of lignocaine in alleviating injection pain for the duration of a two-hour continuous infusion.