Articles: chronic.
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Ventilation and the Response to Hypercapnia after Morphine in Opioid-naive and Opioid-tolerant Rats.
Opioid-related deaths are a leading cause of accidental death, with most occurring in patients receiving chronic pain therapy. Respiratory arrest is the usual cause of death, but mechanisms increasing that risk with increased length of treatment remain unclear. Repeated administration produces tolerance to opioid analgesia, prompting increased dosing, but depression of ventilation may not gain tolerance to the same degree. This study addresses differences in the degree to which chronic morphine (1) produces tolerance to ventilatory depression versus analgesia and (2) alters the magnitude and time course of ventilatory depression. ⋯ In rats, gaining tolerance to morphine analgesia does not reduce ventilatory depression effects when sedated and may inhibit recovery of ventilation.
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Paediatric anaesthesia · Apr 2016
Anesthetic considerations for patients with Bardet-Biedl syndrome: a case series and review of the literature.
Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a rare genetic condition with manifestations that can impact anesthetic and perioperative care. There is a void of literature describing the perioperative anesthetic management in this complex patient population. ⋯ We identified 12 patients with BBS undergoing 40 anesthetics at our institution. The study identified a high risk for difficult airway with need for advanced airway techniques (67% of patient's ≥ 18 years of age required either awake fiberoptic or video laryngoscopy techniques), cardiac abnormalities, renal impairment, morbid obesity, and intellectual disability as the main syndrome manifestations of interest to the anesthesiologist. No patient had perioperative complications directly related to BBS; however, each underwent thorough perioperative evaluation with emphasis on the systemic comorbidities associated with the syndrome. This report illustrates that patients with BBS can safely undergo anesthesia, but a detailed and often multidisciplinary preoperative evaluation is prudent.