Anesthesiology and pain medicine
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Patients with undifferentiated systolic murmurs present commonly during the perioperative period. Traditional bedside assessment and auscultation has not changed significantly in almost 200 years and relies on interpreting indirect acoustic events as a means of evaluating underlying cardiac pathology. This is notoriously inaccurate, even in expert cardiology hands, since many different valvular and cardiac diseases present with a similar auditory signal. ⋯ With a thorough preoperative assessment incorporating focused echocardiography, anaesthetists are in the unique position to enhance their role as perioperative physicians and influence short and long term outcomes of their patients.
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Muscle rigidity and generalized spasm can cause severe pain in patients with tetanus. Administration of high dose sedative or narcotic agents can increase respiratory failure and prolong mechanical ventilation support. ⋯ Nerve blocks may be appropriate for the particular patient with tetanus to tolerate the pain, reduce depth of sedation, accelerate extubation and subsequently decrease complications of tetanus relating to long time intubation.
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Ultrasound-Guided Out-of-Plane vs. In-Plane Interscalene Catheters: A Randomized, Prospective Study.
Continuous interscalene blocks provide excellent analgesia after shoulder surgery. Although the safety of the ultrasound-guided in-plane approach has been touted, technical and patient factors can limit this approach. We developed a caudad-to-cephalad out-of-plane approach and hypothesized that it would decrease pain ratings due to better catheter alignment with the brachial plexus compared to the in-plane technique in a randomized, controlled study. ⋯ Our out-of-plane technique did not provide superior analgesia to the in-plane technique. It did not increase the number of complications. Our technique is an acceptable alternative in situations where the in-plane technique is difficult to perform.
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Patients with mandible deformity may die, as a result of airway management failures. The awake nasal fiberoptic intubation is known as the optimum intubation method, in the mentioned patients, although, in several cases, fiberoptic intubation fails. ⋯ In this case, after failure of awake fiberoptic intubation, awake direct laryngoscopy and blind nasal intubation, finally awake nasal intubation in sitting position, using fiberoptic led to success.
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Use of analgesics, especially opioids, before delivery during cesarean section for preventing hemodynamic changes after endotracheal intubation and postoperative analgesia is limited due to their adverse effects on the neonate. ⋯ Intravenous acetaminophen administered before caesarean section reduced tachycardia after intubation, narcotic drugs administration during and after the operation and reduced pain in PACU.