Articles: surgery.
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As the principle of respect for patient autonomy has gained salience over the past 75 years, surgeons now struggle to resolve conflicts between autonomy and beneficence in certain clinical scenarios. One such conflict occurs when a patient desires a surgical intervention, but the surgeon concludes that the patient is "too sick for surgery" and hence would not benefit from the operation. We provide historical context for the principle of respect for patient autonomy and review recent qualitative data that demonstrate surgeons experience significant moral distress when asked to perform nonbeneficial surgery. ⋯ Third, we use the centuries-old notion of medicine as a profession to show that surgeons have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of their patients, including and especially when patients request interventions that are not beneficial. Finally, we draw on virtue ethics to give surgeons character-based resources for fulfilling their professional obligations to patients. We contend that surgeons owe their patients the ability to trust that they will always use their knowledge and skills for patients' benefit, even if surgeons must limit patients' autonomy in certain ways to do so.
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Global neurosurgery seeks to provide quality neurosurgical health care worldwide and faces challenges because of historical, socioeconomic, and political factors. To address the shortfall of essential neurosurgical procedures worldwide, dyads between established neurosurgical and developing centers have been established. Concerns have been raised about their effectiveness and ability to sustain capacity development. ⋯ Personal experiences from the authors through their partnerships were also captured. We propose a tiered approach for capacity building that provides structured guidance for establishing neurosurgical partnerships with the ECOSystem of care. Clinical partnerships in global neurosurgery aim to build autonomy, enabling independent provision of quality healthcare services.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Family supplemented patient monitoring after surgery (SMARTER): a pilot stepped-wedge cluster-randomised trial.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Cervical orthosis does not improve postoperative pain following posterior cervical fusion: a randomized controlled trial.
To determine whether postoperative neck pain in the first 4 weeks following multi-level posterior cervical fusion (PCF) with orthosis is equivalent to multi-level PCF without orthosis. ⋯ Pain scores over the first 4 weeks after surgery were equivalent for patients undergoing multi-level PCF treated with or without a cervical orthosis. Our findings do not support the routine use of a postoperative cervical orthosis for postoperative pain control. Clinical Trials Registration Number NCT04308122, April 22, 2020.
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Although effects of general anesthesia on neuronal activity in the human neonatal brain are incompletely understood, electroencephalography provides some insight and may identify age-dependent differences. ⋯ Although evidence gaps were identified, both increasing sevoflurane concentration and decreasing temperature are associated with increasing discontinuity.