Journal of clinical anesthesia
-
Expanded outpatient surgery for pediatric patients makes it difficult to provide an unhurried and thorough preoperative visit. A useful component could be a videotape to be seen by parents at the time of their initial hospital visit. For this study, a videotape was made that included an actual induction of anesthesia procedure, information about pediatric anesthesia, and a discussion of the risks of injury or death during anesthesia. ⋯ Most parents (65%) appeared to accept discussion of the risk of perioperative death, although some had strongly negative reactions. The results suggest that a supportive preoperative tape can acquaint parents with the basis for anesthesiologists' concerns and facilitate the preoperative visit. Seeing an actual anesthetic may help to reassure parents about the anesthetic care their children will receive.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
-
Case Reports
Potential toxicity from prolonged anesthesia: a case report of a thirty-hour anesthetic.
Selection of anesthetics for prolonged administration must include consideration of potential toxicity resulting from extended exposure. This report deals with a patient undergoing a 30-hour anesthetic that included nitrous oxide (N2O) and isoflurane (9.7 MAC-hours). ⋯ In addition to outlining basic care guidelines for patients undergoing a prolonged anesthetic, this report discusses potential toxicity from prolonged exposure to both N2O and isoflurane. It concludes that isoflurane can be tolerated in doses up to 10 MAC-hours without fluoride toxicity but cautions against the use of N2O for periods longer than 24 hours.
-
Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Nitrous oxide, nausea, and vomiting after outpatient gynecologic surgery.
Postanesthetic nausea and vomiting can delay discharge of outpatients and can cause occasional admissions to hospital. Nitrous oxide (N2O) has been thought to increase this frequency, but previous studies have been indecisive. One hundred eighty-five unpremedicated outpatients undergoing laparoscopic tubal ligation were studied to determine the effect of N2O on postanesthetic nausea and vomiting. ⋯ Further study is justified. Fentanyl, given postoperatively for pain, did not increase the prevalence of nausea and vomiting. It was concluded that N2O is associated with an increased prevalence of nausea and vomiting.
-
Neuroleptic malignant syndrome is an uncommon, idiosyncratic, and sometimes life-threatening disorder associated with the use of neuroleptic drugs. The pathogenesis of neuroleptic malignant syndrome is uncertain, but it may be similar to that of malignant hyperthermia (MH). ⋯ We anesthetized a 17-year-old man with this syndrome multiple times for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) using a variety of anesthetic techniques. In this patient, dantrolene pretreatment and the use of nondepolarizing muscle relaxants did not relieve symptoms of the syndrome, including fever and creatine phosphokinase (CPK) increases.
-
The assessment of deep neuromuscular blockade produced by nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocking agents is not possible with the conventional use of the Datex NMT-221 "relaxograph" (Datex NMT-221 monitor, Datex Instrumentarium, Helsinki, Finland), an otherwise useful electromyographic (EMG) monitoring device. A method whereby the relaxograph can be adapted to quantitatively measure posttetanic responses is described here. In anesthetized adult patients, neuromuscular blockade was monitored simultaneously on both hands with two relaxographs. ⋯ However, no significant difference was observed in the recovery rate when the tetanic stimuli were spaced at 15-minute intervals. Pharmacologic reversal by atropine and neostigmine was found to be identical in all patient groups. The author concludes that the Datex relaxograph is suitable for the quantitative assessment of profound surgical neuromuscular blockade with the described modification.