Editor's Note In cardiac surgery patients at moderate-to-high risk for death, a restrictive strategy for red blood cell (RBC) transfusion was equivalent to a liberal strategy, with respect to death from any cause, myocardial infarction, stroke, or renal failure, at 6-months follow-up, this study finds. There also were no significant…

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Editor's Note In this study, no benefit of hypnosis before general anesthesia was found on postoperative pain, but it had other benefits, such as less fatigue and anxiety (especially in patients who thought they received hypnosis, but did not) and higher patient satisfaction scores. A total of 150 women having…

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Editor's Note A blood management program at Johns Hopkins using a hemoglobin transfusion threshold of 7 g/dl in orthopedic surgical patients reduced blood use by 32.5% and resulted in similar or improved outcomes. Improved outcomes were primarily in patients 65 years of age or older. For this study, researchers evaluated…

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Editor's Note Increased use of neuraxial anesthesia was associated with lower hospitalization costs for hip and knee replacements, but more studies are needed before considering neuraxial anesthesia as a marker of quality, this study finds. National data on 808,237 total knee and 371,607 total hip replacements were analyzed. Increasing frequency…

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Editor's Note Limiting the level of sedation in elderly hip fracture patients with low comorbid states (Charlson comorbidity index [CCI] of 0) reduced postoperative delirium in this study. Of 200 elderly patients analyzed (100 in lighter sedation and 100 in heavier sedation levels), there was no statistically significant difference in…

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Editor's Note In adults more than 70 years of age, exposure to general anesthesia and surgery was associated with a subtle decline in memory and thinking skills in this study. Of 1,819 patients in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, exposure to anesthesia after age 70 was linked to long-term…

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Editor's Note Increased use of neuraxial anesthesia for total hip and knee patients was linked to lower hospitalization costs in this study. National data on 808,237 total knee and 371,607 total hip replacements were used in the analysis. Multivariable associations were measured between hospital neuraxial anesthesia volume (quartiles) and outcomes…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles applied machine learning to arterial pressure waveforms to develop an algorithm that predicted intraoperative hypotension 15 minutes before it occurred in 84% of cases. Two sets of data were used to build the algorithm. One set consisted…

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Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on June 5 updated its Safety Communication: “Recommendations to Reduce Surgical Fires and Related Patient Injury.” Among the recommendations: Perform a fire risk assessment before each surgical procedure. Encourage communication among anesthesia personnel, surgeons, and OR staff. Practice safe use and administration…

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Editor's Note Though the overall frequency of peripheral nerve block use in outpatient surgery is low, regional anesthesia offers significant positive effects for postoperative outcomes and hospital efficiency metrics, this study finds. Of 12,911,056 outpatient surgical procedures in the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry, 3,297,372 (25.5%) were amenable to a…

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