Der Anaesthesist
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The gastrointestinal tract is a complex organ system. Dysfunctions of this organ system may evoke a variety of consequences for the entire organism and influence the inflammatory response in particular. In perioperative medicine, nutrition, prokinetics, peridural anesthesia, catecholamines and volume therapy can be applied in order to improve the gastrointestinal functional or at least to avoid further aggravation. ⋯ Norepinephrine, if necessary in combination with dobutamine, seems to have fewer negative effects on splanchnic perfusion than epinephrine. The data on volume therapy remain controversial but fluid balance has to be calculated very carefully also considering enteral loss of fluids. Thus, in order to treat and avoid gastrointestinal problems after surgery and to prevent negative effects for the complete organism, multimodal concepts with regard to detail are required.
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Regarding the question of an adequate depth of anesthesia, over the past decade anesthesiologists have focused on the prevention of intraoperative consciousness in combination with explicit memory. Recent studies approached the topic from a different way postulating that deep anesthesia, quantified as time with a bispectral index (BIS)< 45, is associated with increased postoperative mortality and four out of the five published studies revealed such a correlation. ⋯ An epiphenomenon implies e.g. that patients with cancer respond to general anesthesia with deeper cortical depression. In summary, as long as there is a lack of adequately performed randomized trials, there is no reason why anesthesiologists should change the current practice.
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The improved drug therapy leads to increasingly older patients with complex comorbidities in the discipline of operative urology. Today, improved technical equipment provides new operational capabilities in the field of urology. The prone and lithotomy position during surgery leads to physiological changes that affect anesthesia management. ⋯ With respect to the risks arising from patient positioning, supine or lateral positioning should be considered in individual cases. A good communication between the surgeon and anesthetist allows deviation from daily routine procedures if special indications require a modified approach. In conclusion, a profound knowledge of the (patho-)physiology of general anesthesia and endourological diseases enables anesthetists to provide a prospective type anesthesia, which should prevent the occurrence of life-threatening incidents.
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Guidelines on opioid therapy for patients with chronic non-tumor pain should support pain relief, prevent iatrogenic suffering, collateral health damage and legal restrictions on the availability of opioid analgesics. A total of six North American and two European committees recently developed guidelines which differ from the previous ones by being based on many more randomized controlled trials. ⋯ Drafting recommendations for a preferably individual efficacy prognosis is a further objective of the guidelines. This article will discuss if previous and current recommendations of opioid guidelines meet these requirements.
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The development of modern critical care lung ultrasound is based on the classical representation of anatomical structures and the need for the assessment of specific sonography artefacts and phenomena. The air and fluid content of the lungs is interpreted using few typical artefacts and phenomena, with which the most important differential diagnoses can be made. According to a recent international consensus conference these include lung sliding, lung pulse, B-lines, lung point, reverberation artefacts, subpleural consolidations and intrapleural fluid collections. ⋯ Ultrasound-based diagnosis of pneumothorax is superior to supine anterior chest radiography: for ultrasound the sensitivity is 92-100% and the specificity 91-100%. For the diagnosis of pneumothorax a simple algorithm was therefore designed: in the presence of lung sliding, lung pulse or B-lines, pneumothorax can be ruled out, in contrast a positive lung point is a highly specific sign of the presence of pneumothorax. Furthermore, lung ultrasound allows not only diagnosis of pleural effusion with significantly higher sensitivity than chest x-ray but also visual control in ultrasound-guided thoracocentesis.