British journal of anaesthesia
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Editorial Comment
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet: defining patient safety-related terminology.
The definitions of terms related to iatrogenic harm and the potential for iatrogenic harm (e.g. error, medication error, near miss) in the anaesthesia literature are imprecise and variable, resulting in wide discrepancy in conclusions about their rates and potential solutions. Clarification of these terms is both critical and difficult: a concerted effort to achieve expert consensus is warranted.
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Postoperative pain is a common clinical problem that, in preclinical studies, has almost exclusively been studied in males. Altered C-fibre activity-dependent slowing (ADS) is a potential underlying mechanism, given it is altered after tissue inflammation and nerve injury, but this has not been explored post-incision. We therefore investigated the effect of hind-paw incision on C-fibre ADS in both sexes and the involvement of voltage-gated sodium channels (NaV) as they contribute to ADS. We also assessed mechanical and thermal sensitivity post-incision in both sexes. ⋯ Hind-paw incision induces sex-dependent changes in C-fibre activity-dependent slowing, which likely contribute to the observed sex difference in peak thermal hypersensitivity. This may reflect sex- and incision-induced differences in functional expression of NaV channels that differs by C-fibre subtype.