Gum Chewing May Speed Recovery From Postoperative Ileus:
Something to mention across the ether screen Monday....
[Via Medscape Headlines]
Aspect Medical is the company that sells the 'awareness' monitors for anesthesia. Their product is the one featured so prominently in photos accompanying every print story I've seen on intra-operative awareness. This Yahoo Finance headlines seems to indicate it's paying off:
Full disclosure: I still don't use a BIS monitor
[Via Yahoo Search: anesthesia]
My Google News section on 'epidurals' came up with an interesting hit: Lower-back tattoos are popular with women, but do they make having epidurals during childbirth more dangerous?. It's a very good question because, at least in my practice, lower back tattoos are extremely common in laboring women. So common, in fact, that Saturday Night Live has a commercial parody for a product called Turlington's Lower Back Tattoo Remover (quicktime | windows media).
I was taught to avoid putting an epidural needle through tattooed skin and have gone to great lengths to do so. For example, one patient had a very large tattoo of what appeared to be the face of the devil on her lower back. On closer inspection, I noticed that the devil's right nares (which was free of tattoo ink) was right over her L3-4 interspace. I wished I'd taken a picture of that epidural catheter snaking out of the devil's nose.
I can't seem to find much science on the subject save for one abstract which makes a very reasonable suggestion to avoid coring out tattooed skin by making a small incision, if necessary. This may sound like a lot of trouble, but all it takes is a 16 gauge (or similarly large) hypodermic needle inserted into the skin first, then the epidural needle through that 'incision'.
Trasylol (Aprotinin) is a very expensive drug used during many kinds of cardiac surgery to reduce blood loss. In today's print edition of the NEJM (but not online yet) is a very important article by Dennis Mangano (very, very smart anesthesiologist) which shows an "association between aprotinin and serious end-organ damage" including doubling the risk of renal failure requiring dialysis, a 55% increase in the risk of MI or heart failure, and a near doubling of the risk of stroke or encephalopathy. The good news is that there are alternative drugs which cost one tenth as much and are also very good at reducing the need for blood transfusion. More soon....
Baxter moves ahead with drug despite fight (Chicago Sun-Times):
[Via Yahoo Search: anesthesia]
Reading a blog far afield of medicine, then to the Washington Post, I cam across an interesting nugget on C. Diff. The JAMA published an article on December 21, 2005 titled Use of Gastric AcidâSuppressive Agents and the Risk of Community-Acquired Clostridium difficileâAssociated Disease [abstract]. In two population-based case-control studies:
A teleconference is planned for January 18th to discuss these results as part of the new Author-in-the-room series.
Sales of Impotence Drugs Fall, Defying Expectations - New York Times:
[Via New York Times]
ATLA blocking avian flu bill:
All in the name of protecting patients, I'm sure.
[Via PointOfLaw Forum]
The Well Timed Period offers some (well referenced) Q's and A's about the cervical cancer vaccine:
She concludes:
