Tuesday, March 22, 2005

NEJM: Two Articles On Schiavo Case

The NEJM will publish two article on the Schiavo case in an upcoming issue. Both are online now and free without a subscription:

Perspective
Terri Schiavo — A Tragedy Compounded
T.E. Quill

Legal Issues in Medicine
"Culture of Life" Politics at the Bedside — The Case of Terri Schiavo
G.J. Annas



Thursday, March 17, 2005

NEJM: The Serotonin Syndrome

Boyer and Shannon's article in the NEJM The Serotonin Syndrome is an excellent review/introduction to a syndrome every anesthesiologist should be familiar with but that had not been defined when I was in training. Excess serotonergic agonism can be triggered not only by certain drug overdoses, but also by many drugs anesthesiologist give frequently (fentanyl!).



Wednesday, February 16, 2005

NEJM -- The Risk of Cesarean Delivery with Neuraxial Analgesia Given Early versus Late in Labor

NEJM --The Risk of Cesarean Delivery with Neuraxial Analgesia Given Early versus Late in Labor

" Analgesia was initiated in the intrathecal group by a combined spinal–epidural technique. Intrathecal fentanyl (25 µg) was injected, an epidural catheter placed, and an epidural test dose administered. At the second request for analgesia, the cervix was again examined. Epidural analgesia was then initiated as follows: if the cervix was less than 4.0 cm in diameter, a 15-ml epidural bolus of bupivacaine (0.625 mg per milliliter) with fentanyl (2 µg per milliliter) was given, and if the cervix was 4.0 cm or greater in diameter, a 15-ml epidural bolus of bupivacaine (1.25 mg per milliliter) was given (Figure 1). In both instances, patient-controlled epidural analgesia was then begun. "

Bottom Line: Intrathecal fentanyl in women not yet at 4 cm cervical dilation does not increase C-section rate when compared to systemic opioids. Lots of great information to digest over the next several days...



Monday, February 14, 2005

Truth in Advertising

The availability of references and the sponsorship of original research cited in pharmaceutical advertisements (free full text):

" Results: In the 438 ads with medical claims, 126 contained no references and 312 contained 721 unique references. Of these ad references, 55% (396/721) cited journal articles and 19% (135/721) cited data on file. In contrast, in the sample of research article references, 88% (351/400) cited journal articles and 8% (33/400) cited books. Overall, 84% of the citations from the ads were available: 98% of journal articles, 86% of books, 71% of meeting abstracts or presentations and 20% of data-on-file references. In all, 99% of the sample of research article references were available. We determined that 58% of the original research cited in the pharmaceutical ads was sponsored by or had an author affiliated with the product's manufacturer, as compared with 8% of the articles cited in the research articles. "

[Via UK Medical News Today]

We shouldn't be surprised at these findings. It is just marketing, after all.



Sunday, February 13, 2005

Think CPAP Mask After Major Abdominal Surgery

JAMA just published Continuous positive airway pressure for treatment of postoperative hypoxemia: a randomized controlled trial and those of us giving anesthesia for open major abdominal surgery should take note. Here's the abstract:

" Results Patients who received oxygen plus continuous positive airway pressure had a lower intubation rate (1% vs 10%; P = .005; relative risk [RR], 0.099; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.01-0.76) and had a lower occurrence rate of pneumonia (2% vs 10%, RR, 0.19; 95% CI, 0.04-0.88; P = .02), infection (3% vs 10%, RR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.07-0.94; P = .03), and sepsis (2% vs 9%; RR, 0.22; 95% CI, 0.04-0.99; P = .03) than did patients treated with oxygen alone. Patients who received oxygen plus continuous positive airway pressure also spent fewer mean (SD) days in the intensive care unit (1.4 [1.6] vs 2.6 [4.2], P = .09) than patients treated with oxygen alone. The treatments did not affect the mean (SD) days that patients spent in the hospital (15 [13] vs 17 [15], respectively; P = .10). None of those treated with oxygen plus continuous positive airway pressure died in the hospital while 3 deaths occurred among those treated with oxygen alone (P = .12). "

I remember the first time someone suggested using CPAP for the struggling patient in the recovery room after major abdominal surgery. I snorted and mumbled something under my breath about how the patient needed an endotracheal tube and should have taken the offered thoracic epidural. I went back to bed, convinced that I'd be called in an hour or two to intubate the patient who would by then certainly be in extremis. You know what? They never called me that night and this paper helps me understand why.

I think I need to modify my internal algorithm for post-anesthesia management of these often difficult cases to reflect the option of CPAP as a middle ground between mask oxygen and endotracheal intubation.



Saturday, February 12, 2005

Citation Classics in Anesthetic Journals

I was listening to some friends talk about taking a large set of information and making it more useful to the user when I thought about a project I helped with to try to remedy this with regard to the body of published literature in medicine. PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's big online database of medical articles (no, I didn't help with that). Searching for a term on PubMed usually gets lots of results but doesn't necessarily get you any closer to finding that key reference that people consider the classic or definitive paper in the field.

As a teacher in academic anesthesia, I saw residents (note the past tense) had little hope of finding the 'right' paper to read unless I gave it to them. If I said 'read about airway management' they would no doubt find some things about airway management, but probably not the paper on airway management. Unless of course they were able to search a subset of articles in PubMed defined in advance to be especially relevant to their field of study. That's how we conceived of the idea of 'Key References'--make it easy to assemble a list of references for whatever purpose. To make it easy, we used a unique identifier for each article called the PubMed ID Number (PMID). Seth Dillingham then wrote a plugin for Conversant that could take that PMID and go to the PubMed system and (politely) request information about the reference such as title, authors, citation, and even the abstract.

'Citation classics in anesthetic journals' by Baltussen and Kindler is comprised of 'seminal advances in anesthesia' which give 'a historic perspective on the scientific progress of this specialty'. The advantage of having them available online as a compilation lies in the fact that they 1) are searchable and 2) linked to related articles in PubMed (something which even the online version of the original article even does not do).

See for yourself: Citation Classics in Anesthetic Journals

After looking up all 100 PMID's for these articles I wrote to the journal editors and suggested they require authors to include PMID's for references they cite in each article but (apparently) failed to make a convincing enough case. Sort of like in, oh, 1995 when I suggested to the editors of another journal that they could put their articles online using Highwire Press and was told that they had their hands full putting back issues on CD.



Monday, February 7, 2005

Wired Magazine: Pain Management in Iraq

The Painful Truth: The Iraq war is a new kind of hell, with more survivors - but more maimed, shattered limbs - than ever. A revolution in battlefield medicine is helping them conquer the pain.

" For soldiers evacuated from the battlefield, the advantages of nerve blocks over traditional methods of pain control are clear. The wounded troops flying in and out of Landstuhl are often in misery or a narcotized stupor, while those treated with blocks remain awake and pain-free despite massive injuries. "

A great story about how military anesthesiologists are making a big difference for our wounded.



Tuesday, January 18, 2005

JAMA -- Quality of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation During Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest, January 19, 2005, Wik et al. 293 (3): 299

JAMA -- Quality of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation During Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest, January 19, 2005, Wik et al. 293 (3): 299 (free article)

Bottom line--it's hard to do it right. I have given chest compressions in the operating room with an arterial line in place so I can see what effect my compressions are having in terms of generating a pressure. Depressing the chest 4 to 5 cm is a lot, but that's the guideline, and that's what it takes to keep blood pumping to the brain. If you're going to the OR and know you're going to have a cardiac arrest, ask for me.



Wednesday, December 29, 2004

NEJM: Ten Years After Gastric Bypass

Too bad it's not free full text, but the NEJM has published a study showing that bariatric surgery results can be good:

" "Two- and 10-year rates of recovery from diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, hypertension, and hyperuricemia were more favorable in the surgery group than in the control group, whereas recovery from hypercholesterolemia did not differ between the groups. The surgery group had lower 2- and 10-year incidence rates of diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperuricemia than the control group; differences between the groups in the incidence of hypercholesterolemia and hypertension were undetectable." "

Here's a nice graph of the weight loss over the course of the ten year follow up:

The same issue contained another article on obesity in women as it relates to increased risk of death:

" "We estimate that excess weight (defined as a body-mass index of 25 or higher) and physical inactivity (less than 3.5 hours of exercise per week) together could account for 31 percent of all premature deaths, 59 percent of deaths from cardiovascular disease, and 21 percent of deaths from cancer among nonsmoking women." "


[Click for larger image]

It would be interesting to know if weight loss from bariatric surgery confers the same benefit.

Lessons learned from troubles with COX-2 inhibitors - JAMA

JAMA: Arthritis Medicines and Cardiovascular Events—"House of Coxibs" (free full text)

" "In the wake of the high density of new data on coxibs, several important issues now need to be confronted. First, is there any continuing role for coxibs? Only rofecoxib has been shown to reduce gastrointestinal complications compared with naproxen, but valdecoxib and celecoxib have never been definitively confirmed to protect against gastrointestinal complications. While coxib superiority over NSAIDs for relief of arthritic pain has not been shown, many individual patients report pain relief with a coxib but not an NSAID. With the considerably higher cost, marginal efficacy, and known cardiovascular risks of the remaining agents on the market, valdecoxib and celecoxib, it would seem prudent, at the least, to avoid using these agents as first-line therapy. A contraindication is appropriate for patients with established coronary or cerebrovascular disease." "

and the final sentence

" "The combination of mass promotion of a medicine with an unknown and suspect safety profile cannot be tolerated in the future. An aggressive position going forward is necessary not only for ensuring the safety of prescription medicines but also to restore a solid foundation of public trust." "

[Via UK Medical News Today]



Sunday, December 26, 2004

Charite Artificial Intervertebral Discs--ready for prime time?

DePuy Spine/J&J are marketing Charite artificial discs as an alternative to spinal fusion. A recent New York Times report, though pointing out that long term evidence is lacking, was basically positive and contained the following quote from a company representative:

" "Some of the anecdotal evidence for the Charité is impressive." "

Some of the anecdotal evidence? What? This device has been in use in Europe for two decades and that's the best they can do? The Charite web site with information for physicians has results but no references. None.

The one study I did find via PubMed concluded:

" "In this prospective randomized study, both surgical groups improved significantly. Complications of total disc replacement were similar to those encountered with anterior lumbar interbody fusion. Total disc replacement appears to be a viable alternative to fusion for the treatment of single-level symptomatic disc degeneration unresponsive to nonoperative management." "

It may be a 'viable alternative', but there's no data on long term results. Here's what I bet will happen. The FDA will approve the device and ask for long term followup, which is actually done by a company in fewer than half the cases where it is requested by the FDA. (I don't know J&J's record specifically, though.) Patients will read about it and find a surgeon that does the Charite procedure (even if it means going to someone who is not their normal orthopedic surgeon)...and resort to the legal system if their expectations are not met or their long term results are disappointing.

[Via Medgadget]

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