Journal of cardiothoracic and vascular anesthesia
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J. Cardiothorac. Vasc. Anesth. · Jul 2020
Case ReportsThe Safety and Feasibility of Transesophageal Echocardiography in Patients With Esophageal Stricture.
Expert guidelines consistently list esophageal stricture (ES) as a contraindication to the performance of transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), although anecdotally the authors are aware of patients with ES undergoing TEE without apparent complication. Therefore the authors sought to determine the outcomes of patients with ES who had undergone TEE at their institution. ⋯ Patients with nonmalignant ES commonly present for TEE (>100 per year, on average, at the authors' institution). Severe TEE-related esophageal injury rarely occurred in patients with ES. However, changes to the conduct of the TEE examination and procedural difficulty were not infrequent in this group. Clinicians contemplating TEE in patients with ES should prepare for the possibility of altered examination conduct and possible procedural difficulty.
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J. Cardiothorac. Vasc. Anesth. · Jul 2020
Observational StudyWhose Voices Are Heard? Speaker Gender Representation at the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting.
Gender disparities in academic medicine continue to be prevalent despite significant advances in the number of women entering medicine over the last decades. The purpose of the present study was to investigate gender representation of speakers at Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) Annual Scientific Sessions meetings from 2015 to 2018. ⋯ Between 2015 and 2018, the majority of lectures at the SCA annual meetings were given by men, with women consistently giving 22% to 25% of individual lectures. When all sessions were combined, there was a statistically significant difference in the expected versus observed proportion of women in speaking slots.