A & A case reports
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Case Reports
Seizure After Abdominal Surgery in an Infant Receiving a Standard-Dose Postoperative Epidural Bupivacaine Infusion.
We present the case of an otherwise healthy 12-month-old girl undergoing repair of a giant omphalocele, who experienced a postoperative seizure attributed to accumulation of bupivacaine from an epidural infusion. Whereas a standard dose was used, this patient experienced temporary liver dysfunction postoperatively, presumably from elevated intra-abdominal pressures, predisposing her to toxicity after a prolonged infusion. This case illustrates how the type of surgery can influence the margin of safety of routinely used neuraxial local anesthetic doses in infants and young children.
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The development of acute abdominal pain in a laboring parturient after a previous cesarean delivery is of concern and may be the result of a potentially life-threatening condition such as uterine rupture. We present a case of a parturient with type II diabetes mellitus, who had undergone 2 previous cesarean deliveries and now presented in labor with increasing abdominal pain. An emergency cesarean delivery was performed for probable uterine rupture. Intraoperatively, the patient was noted to be severely hypocarbic with significant metabolic acidosis, and the diagnosis of diabetic ketoacidosis was established.
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Social media is a nascent medical educational technology. The benefits of Twitter include (1) easy adoption; (2) access to experts, peers, and patients across the globe; (3) 24/7 connectivity; (4) creation of virtual, education-based communities using hashtags; and (5) crowdsourcing information using retweets. ⋯ Our inaugural anesthesia Twitter-augmented journal club succeeded in engaging the anesthesia community and increasing residents' professional use of Twitter. Notably, our experience suggests that anesthesia residents are willing to use social media for their education.
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Anesthesiologists and surgeons are frequently called on to perform procedures on critically ill patients with advanced directives. We assessed the attitudes of attending and resident surgeons and anesthesiologists at our institution regarding their understanding of and practice around the application of consenting critically ill patients with advance directives in the operating room. To do so, we deployed a survey after interdepartmental grand rounds, featuring a panel discussion of ethically complex cases featuring end-of-life issues.
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An 82-year-old man required aortic valve replacement because of aortic stenosis. A transapical approach was chosen to reduce surgical mortality. Initially, echocardiography and fluoroscopy confirmed correct valve positioning. ⋯ Cardiac output was restored once the valve was replaced. The patient fully recovered. This case report highlights the importance of periprocedural transesophageal echocardiography, which instantly detected the malpositioned valve and guided emergency management of this severe complication.