Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · May 1987
Oxygen saturation during transfer from operating room to recovery after anaesthesia.
Transcutaneous oxygen saturation of haemoglobin was measured in 101 patients en route from the operating room to the recovery room. Twenty-nine became significantly hypoxaemic during the journey. The incidence of hypoxaemia was not found to relate to age, weight, duration or type of surgery, type of anaesthesia or pre-existing disease. Duration of the interval between cessation of oxygen in the operating room and arrival in recovery room was the only significant finding in patients who became hypoxaemic.
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Plasma osmolalities were measured in 100 normal, 100 general hospital and 100 intensive care patients, and compared with the osmolalities calculated from the plasma concentrations of sodium, potassium, glucose and urea, using five different published formulae. The mean osmolar gaps in the 100 consecutive intensive care patients and the 100 general hospital patients were not significantly different from the mean osmolar gap in the 100 normal individuals. The formula which gave the least difference between the measured and calculated osmolality was 2 X Na + urea + glucose, where the concentrations of sodium, urea and glucose were measured in mmol/l.
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The accuracy, safety, reliability and cost of use of 35 intravenous infusion pumps and 3 flow controllers were assessed. When infusing saline 11 out of 17 syringe pumps, 3 out of 5 peristaltic pumps, 1 out of 2 roller pumps and all 14 cassette pumps tested were accurate to within 5% over their full ranges of operation. There was no significant change in the performance of any of the pumps tested when saline was infused through a standard resistance, except in the cases of the 3 flow controllers which were unable to infuse at all against the resistance. ⋯ The cost of consumables for a single use for syringe pumps ranges from A$2 to $5, for peristaltic and roller pumps from A$1 to $10, and for cassette pumps from A$7 to $12, with an additional A$2 for a burette. Accurate delivery of intravenous fluids and drugs is available but is expensive and requires the operator to be specially trained. No simple, cheap, accurate device is yet available.