The American surgeon
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The American surgeon · Dec 2002
Carotid endarterectomy using regional anesthesia: a benchmark for stenting.
Regional block (RB) anesthesia for carotid surgery offers the advantage of continuously monitoring the awake patient's neurologic status during carotid cross-clamping. We retrospectively studied our experience with RB for carotid endarterectomy (CEA) procedures performed during the period January 1, 1995 through December 31, 2001. A total of 388 consecutive CEA procedures were performed; RB was used in 314 and general anesthesia (GA) in 74. ⋯ RB allows 90 per cent of procedures to be performed without shunting, thus facilitating endarterectomy and patch angioplasty. CEA performed under RB is similar to carotid stenting because both procedures allow monitoring of the awake patient's neurologic status. The very low procedural complication rate in this study warrants the consideration of carotid surgery under regional block as a benchmark for future carotid angioplasty and stenting studies.
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The American surgeon · Dec 2002
Intensive care unit outcome of vehicle-related injury in elderly trauma patients.
Vehicle-related trauma is a common mechanism of injury in elderly (age > or = 65 years) trauma patients. Several hospital-based studies have shown that patients with pedestrian injury have a higher mortality compared with those with motor vehicle collision (MVC) injury partially because of older patients found in the former group. In addition the injury patterns also differ significantly between these two mechanisms of vehicle-related trauma. ⋯ There was no difference in the mean age and gender between the two groups. Injury Severity Score, admission Simplified Acute Physiology Score, and mortality were significantly higher in the pedestrian group compared with the MVC group. Using logistic regression analysis three factors were found to be independently predictive of mortality: Simplified Acute Physiology Score, intracranial hemorrhage with mass effect on CT scan, and cardiac complications.
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The American surgeon · Dec 2002
Decompressive craniectomy in trauma patients with severe brain injury.
Decompressive craniectomy in the treatment of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is controversial. We conducted a retrospective review of prospectively collected data on all patients requiring surgery for TBI from 1995 through 2001 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Patients were separated into two groups: Group A, craniectomy, and Group B, craniotomy. ⋯ The type of surgery was not found to be a significant predictor of death even when adjusted for severity of injury. Craniectomy may be helpful for patients with TBI associated with preoperative CT scan evidence of basilar cistern collapse. This is evidenced by similar survival rates between the two groups despite clinical evidence of greater TBI among craniectomy patients.