BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Anesthetic quality and patients' satisfaction has been increasingly praised. Our objective was to evaluate anesthetic management of children and adolescents in our Hospital, by interviewing parents and/or tutors. METHODS 230 parents or tutors of children and adolescents submitted to anesthesia in the period April-December 2003 were interviewed during the postoperativ...

CONTEXT We previously found that length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) after abdominal aortic surgery increased when fewer ICU nurses were available per patient. We hypothesized that having fewer nurses increases the risk for medical complications. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between nurse-to-patient ratio in the ICU and risk for medical and surgical complications after ab...

Post-operative vision loss (POVL) following neck surgery is an uncommon and catastrophic complication. While several intraoperative postoperative risk factors have been implicated, the exact aetiology still remains vague.

Various postoperative complications have been reported after the use of tension-free vaginal tapes (TVT). The transobturator approach was introduced to minimize the potential complications. The next generation of recently introduced TVT-SECUR is intended to minimize the incidence of complications. Herein we report a case of internal pudendal artery injury sustained during this procedure that wa...

BACKGROUND Skin incisions have traditionally been made using a scalpel. Cutting diathermy, a more recent alternative, is thought to increase the risk of infection, impair healing and decrease cosmesis. Recent studies suggest otherwise, claiming that diathermy may offer potential advantages with respect to blood loss, incision time and postoperative pain. The aim of this meta-analysis was to com...

Although posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) is a widely accepted procedure, perioperative and postoperative complications are still encountered. In particular, cage migration can result in severe sequelae, and revision surgery is technically demanded. Here, we report a rare case of repeated migration of a fusion cage after PLIF. To the best of our knowledge, no report has been previously ...

BACKGROUND To assess time-course changes in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) up to 5 years after vitrectomy to treat idiopathic full-thickness macular holes (MHs) and identify the relationship of the changes to postoperative complications. METHODS Twenty-three consecutive patients with an idiopathic MH underwent vitrectomy without adjuvant treatment. BCVA and complications were assessed po...

OBJECTIVE To assess the accuracy of outcome data on appendicectomy routinely collected as part of a surgical audit and to investigate outcome in the non-audited period after discharge. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of audit data recorded by the Medical Data Index (MDI) computer system for all patients undergoing emergency appendicectomy in one year; subsequent analysis of their hospital notes...