British journal of anaesthesia
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Pregabalin reduces postoperative opioid consumption and pain for 1 week after hospital discharge, but does not affect function at 6 weeks or 3 months after total hip arthroplasty.
This study examined whether a perioperative regimen of pregabalin added to celecoxib improved pain scores and functional outcomes postdischarge up to 3 months after total hip arthroplasty (primary outcome) and acute postoperative pain and adverse effects (secondary outcomes). ⋯ Perioperative administration of pregabalin did not improve pain or physical function at 6 weeks or 3 months after total hip arthroplasty. Perioperative administration of pregabalin decreased opioid consumption in hospital and reduced daily pain scores and adjunct opioid consumption for 1 week after discharge.
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As the population of the world is rapidly ageing, the amount of surgery being performed in older patients is also increasing. Special attention is required for the anaesthetic and perioperative management of these patients. The clinical and non-clinical issues specific to older surgical patients are reviewed, with a special emphasis on areas of debate related to anaesthesia care in this group. These issues include the role of frailty and disability in preoperative assessment, choice of anaesthesia technique for hip fracture, postoperative delirium, and approaches to shared decision-making before surgical procedures.
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Review
Risk assessment tools validated for patients undergoing emergency laparotomy: a systematic review.
Emergency laparotomies are performed commonly throughout the world, but one in six patients die within a month of surgery. Current international initiatives to reduce the considerable associated morbidity and mortality are founded upon delivering individualised perioperative care. However, while the identification of high-risk patients requires the routine assessment of individual risk, no method of doing so has been demonstrated to be practical and reliable across the commonly encountered spectrum of presentations, co-morbidities and operative procedures. ⋯ APACHE II demonstrated the most consistent discrimination of individual outcome across a variety of patient groups undergoing emergency laparotomy when used either preoperatively or postoperatively (area under the curve 0.76-0.98). While APACHE systems were designed for use in critical care, the ability of APACHE II to generate individual risk estimates from objective, exclusively preoperative data items may lead to better-informed shared decisions, triage and perioperative management of patients undergoing emergency laparotomy. Future endeavours should include the recalibration of APACHE II and P-POSSUM in contemporary cohorts, modifications to enable prediction of morbidity and assessment of the impact of adoption of these tools on clinical practice and patient outcomes.
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This review examines the recent evidence of an impact of regional anaesthesia on important clinical outcomes. Evidence was obtained from a variety of studies, with increasing numbers of analyses of large databases being prominent. The benefits and limitations of these approaches are considered in order to provide a context for interpretation of the data they generate. ⋯ There are even some data consistent with a hypothesis that general anaesthesia may be protective against postoperative cognitive dysfunction. In conclusion, there is probably no generally applicable benefit in long-term outcomes with regional anaesthesia. More likely is an interaction between patient factors, the surgical procedure, and the relative capability of the anaesthetist to manage different types of anaesthesia.
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Observational Study
Postoperative pain assessment in children: a pilot study of the usefulness of the analgesia nociception index†.
The ability to perform objective pain assessment is very important in paediatric patients. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between the analgesia nociception index (ANI), which is based on the heart rate variability, and objective measurements of pain intensity in young or cognitively impaired children, after surgical or imaging procedures (control group) under general anaesthesia. ⋯ The ANI may provide an objective measurement of acute postoperative pain, which is correlated with that measured on a FLACC scale in young or cognitively impaired children.