Anesthesiology and pain medicine
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Lumbar central spinal stenosis is common and often results in chronic persistent pain and disability, which can lead to multiple interventions. After the failure of conservative treatment, either surgical or nonsurgical modalities such as epidural injections are contemplated in the management of lumbar spinal stenosis. ⋯ The available evidence suggests that epidural injections with local anesthetic alone or with local anesthetic with steroids offer short- and long-term relief of low back and lower extremity pain for patients with lumbar central spinal stenosis. However, the evidence is Level II for the long-term efficacy of caudal and interlaminar epidural injections, whereas it is Level III for short-term improvement only with transforaminal epidural injections.
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Pain after laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery (LGBP) is a major problem. Gabapentin is an anticonvulsant drug that can be effective in postoperative pain control. ⋯ Administration of gabapentin before surgery can reduce pain after LGBP. Furthermore, it is not accompanied by significant short-term adverse effects.
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The liver as an important organ in the body has many essential functions in physiological processes. One of the major activities of liver is drug metabolism. Hepatic dysfunction affecting hepatic physiological activities, especially drug metabolism can cause many problems during anesthesia and administration of different drugs to patients. ⋯ A review of the literature on the use of hypnotic drugs in patients with liver dysfunction showed that some hypnotic drugs used during anesthesia could be safely used in patients with impaired liver function. In these patients, certain drugs should be used with caution.
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Prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay after cardiac surgery is vitally important and is influenced by both intraoperative and postoperative factors. ⋯ Vitamin C can decrease the length of hospital stay, drainage volume in the ICU and in the first 24 postoperative hours, intubation time and some complications in patients after cardiac surgery; perhaps by decreasing inflammatory factors.
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Patency of the revascularization conduit is an essential predictor of long-standing survival after coronary artery bypass grafting. ⋯ In our patients, the RA grafts had an acceptable patency rate in 2 to 5 years' follow-up. Although the SV grafts had a relatively higher patency rate than RA grafts in our asymptomatic patients, the patency rates in RA and SV grafts were close to each other. The RA graft function was poor in the patients with a higher number of risk factors and in the females.