Anesthesiology and pain medicine
-
Pain management after cardiac surgery has been based on parenteral long-acting opioids such as morphine. The other alternatives are paracetamol and remifentanil. ⋯ Both PCA techniques provided effective pain scores (< 3) after cardiac surgery; but generally, PCA-paracetamol infusion has a better analgesic effect.
-
Pain relief after surgery is an essential component of postoperative care. ⋯ Intravenous acetaminophen reduced pain following outpatient urological surgery more significantly than meperidine.
-
Nowadays laryngeal mask airway (LMA) is popular as one of the best choices for airway management. Low-flow anesthesia has some advantages like lower pollution, hemodynamic stability and cost effectiveness. Volatile anesthetics are widely used for anesthesia maintenance during operations. Sevoflurane has more hemodynamic stability compared to isoflurane, but there are few studies comparing the hemodynamic stabilities of these two anesthetics during controlled low flow anesthesia with LMA. ⋯ Seemingly, low-flow sevoflurane with LMA did not have any significant hemodynamic effect on clinical practice. Therefore, low-flow sevoflurane anesthesia with LMA might be considered in patients with short operations who need rapid recovery from anesthesia.
-
The anti-inflammatory properties of magnesium sulfate have never been discussed in brain tumor surgeries. ⋯ We did not find conclusive evidence for anti-inflammatory effects of magnesium in craniotomy for microsurgery of intracranial tumors using CRP level changes. However, high dose magnesium might be suggested as a safe anesthetic adjuvant in neurosurgery.
-
Most pain physicians know that fluoroscopy might improve the safety, accuracy, and efficacy of nerve block; however, it is difficult to distinguish the previously administered contrast medium from the injecting contrast medium, and to identify accurate contrast medium diffusion flow in a case of existing radiodensities such as cement and screw. Digital subtraction angiography (DSA) can improve accuracy of nerve blocks. ⋯ The advantages of DSA in fluoroscopy-guided transforaminal epidural block and nerve block are identification of the degree of appropriate contrast flow (epidural and nerve root sleeve) and the intravascular administration without overlapping radiodense structures.