Journal of clinical monitoring and computing
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J Clin Monit Comput · Jan 2000
Hierarchical rule-based monitoring and fuzzy logic control for neuromuscular block.
The important task for anaesthetists is to provide an adequate degree of neuromuscular block during surgical operations, so that it should not be difficult to antagonize at the end of surgery. Therefore, this study examined the application of a simple technique (i.e., fuzzy logic) to an almost ideal muscle relaxant (i.e., rocuronium) at general anaesthesia in order to control the system more easily, efficiently, intelligently and safely during an operation. ⋯ The results showed that a hierarchical rule-based monitoring and fuzzy logic control architecture can provide stable control of neuromuscular block despite the considerable individual variation in neuromuscular block required among patients. Also, there was less variation in T1% error compared with that of previous study on mivacurium. Meanwhile, the consistent medium CV of the MIR of both rocuronium and mivacurium indicated a good controller activity which is able to withstand noise, diathermy effect, artifacts and surgical disturbances.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Jan 2000
Comparative Study Clinical TrialNon-invasive estimation of cardiac output in critical care patients.
This study was carried out to compare cardiac output measurements determined by thermodilution and by Portapres, a non-invasive system. ⋯ To date, Portapres measurements cannot replace thermodilution cardiac output estimations. Fluctuations of finger arterial perfusion due to hemodynamic instability, hypothermia and catecholamines may be responsible for problems of Portapres use in critically ill patients.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Jan 2000
Accuracy of deadspace free ventilatory measurements for lung function testing in ventilated newborns: a simulation study.
A deadspace free method based on simultaneous ventilatory measurements in the inspiratory and expiratory limb of the ventilator circuit was compared to the conventional endotracheal method where the flow is measured between ETT and Y-Piece. The aim of our study was to find out how the arrangement of this setup affects the measuring accuracy of 1) the ventilatory and 2) the lung mechanical parameters by means of a computer simulation. ⋯ The dead space free method can be used for accurate ventilatory measurements during mechanical ventilation. However, for lung mechanic measurements in very low birth weight infants the position of the PNTs must be as short as possible.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Jan 2000
Using an anesthesia information management system to prove a deficit in voluntary reporting of adverse events in a quality assurance program.
A deficit is suspected in the manual documentation of adverse events in quality assurance programs in anesthesiology. In order to verify and quantify this, we retrospectively compared the incidence of manually recorded perioperative adverse events with automatically detected events. ⋯ Using automatic detection, we were able to prove a considerable deficit in the documentation of adverse events according to the guidelines of the German quality assurance program in anesthesiology. Based on the data from manual recording, the results of the quality assurance of our department match those of other comparable German departments. Thus, we are of the opinion that manual incident reporting seriously underestimates the true occurrence rate of incidents. This brings into question the validity of quality assurance comparisons based on manually recorded data.