Editor's Note A new report from the National Institutes of Health, Radiological Society of North America, American College of Radiology, and The Academy, provides a roadmap for translational research on artificial intelligence (AI) in medical imaging. The report summarizes key priorities: creating structured AI use cases that define and highlight…

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Editor's Note A closed ICU model was associated with significantly reduced rates of central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI), catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI), and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in this study, presented May 22 at ATS 2019, the annual international conference of the American Thoracic Society in Dallas.…

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Editor's Note Targeting a patient’s mean arterial pressure (MAP) during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) by monitoring cerebral blood flow autoregulation may reduce the incidence of delirium after cardiac surgery in older patients, this Johns Hopkins study finds. In this analysis of 199 patients, the incidence of delirium was significantly greater in…

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Editor's Note Antibiotic delivery is significantly faster for sepsis patients treated in an emergency department (ED) if they are assigned a higher score on an acuity scale used for patient triage, finds this study presented May 22 at ATS 2019, the annual international conference of the American Thoracic Society in…

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Editor's Note Regional anesthesia was not associated with decreased readmission rates and costs after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) in this study. In this analysis of 138,362 privately insured TKA patients 18-64 years of age, the adjusted 90-day readmission rate was 1.8% for those who did not receive regional anesthesia compared…

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As part of a special series on artificial intelligence (AI), OR Manager is taking a deep dive into the many facets of this new technology and its impact on patient care. Part 1 of this introduction to the series (OR Manager, May 2019, 1, 7-11) defined several different types of…

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Though long fasting before a surgical procedure is tied to increased patient risks, the outdated guideline of NPO after midnight continues to be practiced by many healthcare organizations. In 1999, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) revised their fasting guidelines to clear liquids up to 2 hours before surgery and…

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Perioperative services departments have been slow to adopt the black boxes used in the aviation industry, partly because it can take a large team of experts hours to analyze data collected by the box. However, the team behind a surgical black box is using artificial intelligence (AI) to significantly cut…

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Healthcare is striving to become an industry of high-reliability organizations, and part of being a high-reliability industry means staying vigilant and identifying problems proactively. ECRI Institute’s annual Top 10 list helps organizations identify looming patient safety challenges and offers suggestions and resources for addressing them. ECRI Institute relied on event…

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Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, located in Lake Forest, Illinois, has taken a giant leap in curtailing late starts in the OR. In December 2016, the facility’s on-time start percentage was only 37%. Perioperative team members dug in their heels and, by August 2017, increased their on-time starts to 77%.…

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