Seminars in vascular surgery
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Mass casualty incidents can be devastating events associated with a large number of fatalities, morbidities, and long-lasting sequelae. The negative outcomes can be further amplified if the incident occurred during a pandemic surge, such as what occurred in Beirut, Lebanon with the August 4, 2020 Beirut Port explosion. To decrease the mortality and morbidity and avoid inefficiency, management depends on having an established coordinated multidisciplinary approach from transport and triage to emergency department care and in-hospital management. In this article, the mass casualty management and the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic will be discussed based on the American University of Beirut Medical Center experience.
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Review Meta Analysis
Management of renal dysfunction in patients with liver cirrhosis: role of pretransplantation hemodialysis and outcomes after liver transplantation.
Patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) who develop hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) have very high mortality rates. For patients with HRS type I, median survival without specific therapy is only 2 weeks. Due to worsening clinical condition in such patients secondary to uremia and hepatic disease, some form of renal replacement therapy (RRT), either intermittent hemodialysis IHD or continuous veno-venous hemodialysis (CVVHD), must be instituted. ⋯ However, patients requiring post-LT hemodialysis for prolonged periods showed poor outcomes and a tendency to progress to chronic kidney disease. In all selected studies, patients with post-transplantation CVVHD for a prolonged period had a 3-year survival rate of ≤40%. This review highlights the role of pretransplantation CVVHD in selected patients with HRS who could achieve significantly better survival rates compared with patients without any renal replacement therapy or patients with post-transplantation CVVHD.
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The average patient requiring vascular surgery has become older, as life expectancy within the US population has increased. Many older patients have some degree of frailty and reside near the limit of their physiological reserve with restricted ability to respond to stressors such as surgery. Frailty assessment is an important part of the preoperative decision-making process, in order to determine whether patients are fit enough to survive the vascular surgery procedure and live long enough to benefit from the intervention. In this review, we will discuss different measures of frailty assessment and how they can be used by vascular surgery providers to improve preoperative decision making and the quality of patient care.
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B-type natriuretic peptide (also known as brain natriuretic peptide or BNP) is a physiologic marker that is often used to assess a patient's global cardiovascular health. BNP is secreted from the ventricular cardiac myocytes in response to stretch that occurs due to increased intravascular volume. PreproBNP is cleaved into BNP and N-terminal proBNP (NT proBNP) to cause diuresis, natriuresis, and vasodilation, and can be measured with a blood laboratory assay test or point-of-care testing. ⋯ An elevated BNP/NT-proBNP, excluding those with reasons for abnormal values, suggests the need for additional risk stratification and medical risk factor optimization. A preoperative measure of BNP or NT-proBNP affords an easy and rapid opportunity to individually and objectively quantify perioperative cardiovascular risk. Recent studies have also identified other biomarkers, none superior to BNP or NT-proBNP, but that, when used concomitantly, aid in further stratifying perioperative risk and will likely be the focus of future investigations.
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"Optimal" control of serum glucose levels is an important principle in the successful management of diabetes mellitus. Conversely, poorly controlled serum glucose levels are associated with negative sequelae, including accelerated progression of cardiovascular disease, increased mortality, and increased perioperative complications. The importance of glycemic control as a part of appropriate perioperative management is reviewed and target values are recommended.