Der Anaesthesist
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Up to now 136 cases of myocardial infarction during pregnancy have been reported, and angiography revealed normal findings in 47%. In these cases coronary spasms have been discussed as the major mechanism of the disease. In isolated cases coronary artery dissection may also present with a normal coronary angiography. ⋯ It was pointed out recently that even in asymptomatic patients, plaques may be present in coronary vessels indicating an early stage of CAD that cannot be diagnosed by angiography. Plaque rupture is often triggered by hypertension and may lead to myocardial infarction, instable angina pectoris, or sudden ischemic death. As IVUS is a new diagnostic tool that allows diagnoses of even early stages of CAD we believe that myocardial infarction during pregnancy is more often caused by plaque rupture than may be expected according to the current literature.
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Inapparent adverse intraoperative wakefulness is still a relevant problem in modern anaesthetic routine. It can be associated with serious negative effects on the postoperative recovery of the patients. Several different procedures have been developed to monitor and therefore avoid intraoperative situations of wakefulness during general anaesthesia. ⋯ There is a hierarchical correlation between certain values of the MLAEP and intraoperative wakefulness defined by purposeful movements, amnesic awareness with only implicit recall and conscious awareness with explicit recall. For some of the most commonly used anaesthetics reasonable threshold values of the MLAEP for the different states of consciousness have already been determined. Future studies in broad patient populations with all of the different routinely used anesthetics and procedures will have to finally identify the importance of the recording of mid-latency auditory evoked potentials as a routine method to assess the depth of anaesthesia.