NAP5 and consent

5th National Audit Project (NAP5) on accidental awareness during general anaesthesia: patient experiences, human factors, sedation, consent, and medicolegal issues.

The 5th National Audit Project (NAP5) of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland into accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA) yielded data related to psychological aspects from the patient, and the anaesthetist, perspectives; patients' experiences ranged from isolated auditory or tactile sensations to complete awareness...

NAP5: aware of the limitations.

Editor—I would like to congratulate P.S. Myles on an excellent editorial in the BJA, and reiterate the caution he expresses regarding the appropriateness of applying the findings of NAP5 (or indeed any clinical trial, survey or audit) to a different population than that which has been sampled. Myles refers to the misguided tendency/desire of clinicians to extrapolate the results of a specific s...

NAP5 and isolated forearm technique: reply.

not suitable for deployment. The encouragement in the NAP5 report of IFT training and its apparent elevation to equal status with pEEG, may lead to wellmeaning but potentially harmful clinical experimentation, with unknown consequences for patients. Although a tourniquetmay be safely inflated for a limited period during arm surgery, failure to deflate an IFT cuff might eventually lead to seriou...

NAP5: intraoperative awareness detected, and undetected.

Normative consent is not consent.

The UK has an opt-in system of consent for postmortem organ donation. More specifically, the Human Tissue Act 2004 prohibits the removal, storage, and use of organs postmortem for a range of ‘‘scheduled purposes’’—which include transplantation—unless ‘‘appropriate consent’’ has been given. Appropriate consent can be given by the donor premortem by signing and carrying a donor card, or by opting...