Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on December 19, 2019, identified the recall by Smiths Medical ASD, Inc of its Medfusion 4000 Syringe Pumps as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because of malfunctioning low-battery alarms, which may lead to an interruption of therapy. The…

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Editor's Note Researchers at NYU Langone Health combined advanced optical imaging with an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to produce accurate, real-time intraoperative diagnosis of brain tumors in this study. Compared with the accuracy of pathologists’ interpretation of conventional histologic images, the results for both methods were comparable. The AI-based diagnosis…

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Editor's Note In this study from Israel, researchers found that surgical scrubs worn outside the OR were contaminated with a low bacterial load and only a small number of pathogenic bacteria. For the study, specimens were collected at the entrance to the OR from surgical scrubs worn by 133 surgeons.…

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Editor's Note In this first-year analysis of a data capture system called the OR Black Box, frequent intraoperative errors, events, variation in surgeons’ technical skills, and a high amount of environmental distractions were identified. In 132 patients having elective laparoscopic general surgery: auditory distractions occurred a median of 138 times…

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Editor's Note In this study from Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, a first case on-time starts (FCOTS) improvement initiative was linked to a higher frequency of FCOTS, which was independently associated with last case on-time ends (LCOTE) and decreased OR overtime costs. Of 12,073 cases (6,095 pre- vs…

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Editor's Note Surgery patients overwhelmingly prefer pre-surgical safety checklists to be completed in front of them, contrary to what is thought by anesthesiologists, this Swiss study finds. In this trial, which included 110 anesthesiologists and 125 non-premedicated ear-nose-throat or maxillofacial surgery patients, the patients overwhelmingly agreed that anesthesiologists should use…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, designed, implemented, and assessed the effect of the first surgery-specific peer support program in the US. The program uses five steps: creation of a conceptual framework choice of peer supporters training of peer supporters multifaceted identification of major adverse…

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Editor's Note In this study, active cannabis use disorder was linked to an increased risk of postoperative myocardial infarction (MI). Researchers retrospectively analyzed 4,186,622 elective surgery patients in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. Of 27,206 patients in the propensity-score matched-pairs cohort, there was no statistically significant difference between those with (400…

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Editor's Note Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with surgical decision making could transform care by augmenting the decision to perform surgery, informed consent process, identification and mitigation of modifiable risk factors, decisions on postoperative management, and shared decision for resource use, this review finds. Surgical decision making involves hypothetical-deductive reasoning, individual…

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Editor's Note The Center for Fluorescence-Guided Surgery at UC San Diego Health is the first in the country dedicated to delivering a new caliber of surgical accuracy that allows surgeons to identify cancerous or critical tissues with GPS-like precision by lighting them up, the December 5 UC San Diego Health…

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