Editor's Note Patients were more likely to take their regularly prescribed medications correctly before surgery when they were provided a simple instruction sheet, finds this study presented October 24 at the Anesthesiology 2016 annual meeting. For the study, 48 patients were given verbal instructions and 57 were given a new,…

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Editor's Note Implementing the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model resulted in improved patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and shorter hospital stays in this study presented October 22 at the Anesthesiology 2016 annual meeting. The study included 1,356 patients who had total knee, hip, or shoulder replacements. Half received care under the…

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Is it possible to adequately capture the experience of patients undergoing anesthesia when their awareness and perceptions are typically altered by their very experience? A 5-year study of anesthesia patient satisfaction suggests that not only is it possible, but the results are meaningful in providing anesthesia-specific validation and in identifying…

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Editor's Note This study found no clinically significant differences between continuous femoral nerve block (cFNB), local infiltration analgesia (LIA), and single femoral nerve block (sFNB) for pain during physical therapy 2 days after total knee arthroplasty. There were no statistically significant differences between groups in 48-hour opioid consumption or functional…

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Editor's Note In this meta-analysis, propofol anesthesia was associated with reduced postoperative pain intensity at 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 12 hours as well as reduced morphine-equivalent consumption 0 to 24 hours postoperatively. Fewer patients required postoperative rescue analgesics during 0 to 24 hours after surgery under propofol, and patients…

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Editor's Note This study found a strong association between spinal anesthesia and lower 30-day mortality along with a shorter length of stay after total hip and knee replacements. Of 10,868 patients analyzed, 8,553 had spinal anesthesia and 2,315 had general anesthesia. The 30-day mortality rate was 0.19% in the spinal…

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Editor's Note Children who played games on an Apple iPad before surgery had a reduction in their stress levels equal to the effect of taking a sedative, according to a study presented at the World Congress of Anaesthesiologists in Hong Kong. In addition, parental satisfaction and quality of anesthesia induction…

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Editor's Note In children undergoing staged reconstructive surgery for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, increasing cumulative exposure to volatile anesthetic agents beginning in infancy was associated with worse performance on IQ scores between ages 4 and 5, this study finds. This is the first study to link neurodevelopment outcomes with cardiac…

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Editor's Note Single-dose antibiotic prophylaxis was associated with fewer peripheral and epidural catheter infections, this study finds. The study included 11,307 regional anesthesia patients with single-dose antibiotic prophylaxis and 11,307 controls who did not receive antibiotics. For peripheral catheters, the incidence of infections without antibiotics was 2.4%, compared with 1.1%…

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Editor's Note Double gloving by anesthesia providers was associated with less spread of oral inoculum to the workstation but was not uniformly protective in this simulation study. Between-case cleaning was found to be ineffective in removing contaminants, indicating that biologic material from one patient may still be present for subsequent…

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