Anaesthesia
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Ten patients, undergoing elective orthopaedic surgery under spinal anaesthesia, were sedated with propofol using a closed-loop feedback control system. The bispectral index (BIS), a new processed EEG parameter, was used as control variable. ⋯ This feedback control system for propofol administration proved to be adequate and safe. BIS was found to be well suited as control variable.
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Incident reporting is an effective tool for continuous quality improvement in clinical practice. A prospective study on voluntary incident reporting in pain management was conducted at a major teaching hospital in Hong Kong. Over a 12-month period, 53 incidents were reported in 1275 patients who received pain relief treatments which were supervised by the acute pain service. ⋯ Four patients developed major morbidity of which two were attributed to inadequate analgesia, while three others had major physiological changes without morbidity. Strategies have been formulated to prevent further occurrence of these incidents. We propose that incident reporting is a potentially useful tool in identifying and preventing adverse events in postoperative pain management.