Anesthesiology clinics
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Explosive devices cause injury by four mechanisms, of which primary blast injury is the least familiar to most non-military clinicians. The pathophysiology of the various mechanisms of injury is described, and the implications for translating a knowledge of mechanism of injury to clinical management is discussed.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Mar 2007
ReviewGeriatric trauma: special considerations in the anesthetic management of the injured elderly patient.
Modern society is characterized as having an ever enlarging population of older adults. There are more elderly patients, and the average age of this group is increasing. ⋯ Evaluation of the physiologic status of the geriatric patient should take into account the variability of the changes associated with advancing age. Care of the injured elderly patient requires thorough preoperative assessment and planning and the involvement of a multidisciplinary clinical team knowledgeable about and interested in the management of the elderly surgical patient.
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Penetrating face and neck trauma is usually obvious, but blunt trauma mandates high index of suspicion to recognize its existence. Comprehensive understanding of the injury is mandatory to plan the best timing and method to secure the airway.
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Novel nonsurgical approaches to bleeding control offer hope for improved management of the critical trauma-related coagulopathy and diffuse bleeding that often typify major trauma and pose challenges to surgeons and anesthetists. Although surgical treatment is the cornerstone of bleeding control, in selected patients angiographic embolization is increasingly used early in patient care to successfully manage arterial bleeding attributable to blunt solid organ injury or posterior pelvic ring disruption. Coagulopathic derangements in trauma occur early and require avoidance or correction of acidosis and hypothermia. If bleeding cannot be stopped by these measures, adjunctive use of fibrinogen or recombinant activated factor VII (rFVIIa) have the potential to correct systemic coagulopathy associated with massive blood loss and its management.
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Anesthesiology clinics · Mar 2007
ReviewMultiple casualty incidents: the prehospital role of the anesthesiologist in Europe.
The recent increase in incidents involving mass casualties has emphasized the need for a planned and coordinated prehospital emergency medical response, with medical teams on-site to provide advanced trauma life support. The special skills of the anesthesiologist make his/her contribution to prehospital emergency care particularly valuable. ⋯ In contrast, the French approach is based on the use of its emergency care system SAMU, where both structured dispatching and on-site medical care is provided by physicians, including anesthesiologists. In this article, the lessons learned from multiple casualty incidents in Europe during the past 2 decades are considered from the standpoint of the anesthesiologist.