Journal of anesthesia
-
Journal of anesthesia · Mar 1995
Compound A concentration and the temperature of CO2 absorbents during low-flow sevoflurane anesthesia in surgical patients.
Sevoflurane, a new inhalational anesthetic, is metabolically broken down into several decomposition products in the presence of CO2 absorbents. One of the products, CF2=C (CF3) OCH2F (compound A), which appears to be the most toxic, was quantitated in 20 surgical patients subjected to more than 3 h of anesthesia using a low-flow anesthesia circuit. To minimize the variables in the reaction velocity between sevoflurane and the CO2 absorbents, we maintained the sevoflurane concentration at 2%. ⋯ We also measured the temperature in CO2 absorbents, which had been reported to influence compound A production. The elevation in the temperature was 27.9±1.3°C in Wakolime-A, 29.4±8.4°C in Baralyme, and 31.0±5.0°C in Sodasorb II. Further studies are needed to assess the safety and efficacy of sevoflurane.
-
Journal of anesthesia · Mar 1995
Auditory brainstem responses after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: Are they useful for outcome prediction?
We evaluated whether we could predict the neurologic outcome in 55 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients using auditory brainstem responses (ABR). ABR patterns were classified into one of 3 types by evaluation of 5 components: type 1, with all 5 components; type 2, lack of at least one response between the 2nd and 5th components; type 3, with only the first component or no response. The relation between the ABR patterns on the 3rd day following resuscitation and the neurologic outcome on hospital discharge was evaluated. ⋯ In the type-1 ABR patients, the negative predictive value that the patients were awake was 100%. In the type-3 ABR patients, the negative predictive value that the patients became brain dead was 90.9%. These results suggest that ABR on the 3rd post-resuscitation day may not be useful for predicting if patients are awake or become brain dead, although the loss of components may be a sign of morbidity, and the presence of the 2nd or later components indicates possible future prevention of brain death.
-
Journal of anesthesia · Mar 1995
Use of personal computers for translation and publication of an anesthesia textbook.
We used personal computers extensively for translating and publishing in Japanese an anesthesia textbook originally written in English. The procedure included optical character recognition, scanning of figures, use of computer translation, use of electronic mail and computer type-setting. While these have individually been done previously, this is process of any medical textbook published in Japanese. The advantages of combining these technologies are good exchange of information among individual authors/translators, rapid translation process, preliminary visualization of the final product, and overall high quality of the published book.