T. T. Dong1, J. Mellin-Olsen2 and A. W. Gelb3,* 1 Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, University of California San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, Room S436, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA, 2 Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive CareMedicine, BaerumHospital, PO Box 83, Oslo N-1309 RUD, Norway, and 3 Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, University of California, Sa...

We conducted a retrospective study to investigate the anesthesia-controlled time and factors that contribute to prolonged extubation in open colorectal surgery. Using our hospital database, demographic data, various time intervals (waiting for anesthesia time, anesthesia time, surgical time, emergence time, exit from operating room after extubation, total operating room time, and post-anesthesi...

BACKGROUND Transfers of patient care and responsibility among caregivers, "handovers," are common. Whether handovers worsen patient outcome remains unclear. The authors tested the hypothesis that intraoperative care transitions among anesthesia providers are associated with postoperative complications. METHODS From the records of 138,932 adult Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, Ohio) surgical patie...

BACKGROUND Obstetrics carries high medical liability risk. Maternal death and newborn death/brain damage were the most common complications in obstetric anesthesia malpractice claims before 1990. As the liability profile may have changed over the past two decades, the authors reviewed recent obstetric claims in the American Society of Anesthesiologists Closed Claims database. METHODS Obstetri...

BACKGROUND General anesthesia with single-lung ventilation is considered mandatory for thoracoscopic pulmonary resection. We assessed in a randomized study the feasibility and results of awake thoracoscopic resection of solitary pulmonary nodules. METHODS Between March 2001 and February 2003, 60 patients were randomized into two 30-patients arms: a general anesthesia arm entailing double-lume...

An innovative partnership with Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Culturally Competent Care (ICCC) enabled the Kaiser Permanente School of Anesthesia/California State University Fullerton (KPSA) to present a formal, 4-module cultural competency certification program within the nurse anesthesia curriculum. The goals of developing the cultural competency curriculum were to increase students' aware...

In 2006, a previous study at our institution reported high perioperative and anesthesia-related mortality rates of 21.97 and 1.12 per 10,000 anesthetics, respectively. Since then, changes in surgical practices may have decreased these rates. However, the actual perioperative and anesthesia-related mortality rates in Brazil remains unknown. The study aimed to reexamine perioperative and anesthes...

Pneumocephalus is a condition which usually results from head trauma. It has been known that iatrogenic pneumocephalus can occur as a complication of positive pressure mask ventilation during induction of anesthesia or ventilatory care for head trauma patients. We report a case of mask ventilation during anesthesia induction in a 50-year-old male patient with head trauma. Initial pneumocephalus...

BACKGROUND Early in the 20th century, thyroid surgery was performed using local anesthetic techniques. When general anesthesia became safer, surgeons started performing thyroidectomy exclusively under general anesthesia. However, recent descriptions of thyroidectomy under local anesthesia claim similar results to thyroidectomy under general anesthesia. Surgery conducted under local anesthesia c...