British journal of anaesthesia
-
The anaesthetic technique may influence clinical outcomes, but inherent confounding and small effect sizes makes this challenging to study. We hypothesized that regional anaesthesia (RA) is associated with higher survival and fewer postoperative organ dysfunctions when compared with general anaesthesia (GA). ⋯ After adjusting for clinical and patient characteristic confounders, RA was associated with significantly lower odds of several postoperative complications, decreased hospital length of stay, but not mortality when compared with GA.
-
Point-of-care gastric ultrasound is an emerging tool to assess gastric content and volume at the bedside. The examination includes both a qualitative and a quantitative component. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of an existing model for predicting gastric volume in severely obese subjects (BMI >35 kg m-2). ⋯ Our results suggest that the existing mathematical model to determine gastric fluid volume based on sonographic assessment performs well in severely obese individuals.
-
Preoperative identification of high-risk surgical patients might help to reduce postoperative morbidity and mortality. Using a patient's predicted 30 day mortality to plan postoperative high-dependency unit (HDU) care after elective colorectal surgery might be associated with reduced postoperative morbidity. ⋯ Planned postoperative critical care was associated with a lower rate of complications after elective colorectal surgery.