At the International Anesthesia Research Society annual conference, which took place May 17-20, 2014, the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety presented results from the first national survey of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) practice. The survey results showed good news and bad news for patients receiving opioids. Continue reading “The Good and Bad News for Patients Receiving Opioids: Physician-Patient Alliance Presents Survey Results at International Anesthesia Research Society Annual Conference”
Tag: end tidal CO2
Health Experts Discuss Four Flawed Monitoring Practices
by Sean Power
Recently four health experts participated in a webinar on The Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event Alert on the safe use of opioids. On the panel were patient safety experts including Dr. Frank Overdyk, Professor of Anesthesiology at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine; Ray Maddox, Director of Clinical Pharmacy, Research and Pulmonary Medicine at St. Joseph Candler; Tammy Haslar, Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist at the Franciscan Alliance at St. Francis Health, and Debbie Fox, Director of Respiratory Care at Wesley Medical Center.
The panel discussed the role of continuous monitoring in opioid safety. To watch the entire webinar, please click here. Continue reading “Health Experts Discuss Four Flawed Monitoring Practices”
Ensuring child safety during common medical procedures
by Michael Wong
The safety of children could be at risk when they undergo common procedures involving sedation, such as for fracture reduction, laceration repair, and incision and drainage of an abscess.
As a recent study published in Pediatric Emergency Care found, 72% of the episodes of prolonged hypoxia were preceded by decreases in ETco2 as measured by capnography. This suggests that the use of capnography would enhance patient safety by decreasing the frequency of hypoxia during sedation in children. A capnograph is monitoring device that measures the concentration of carbon dioxide that a person breathes out in exhaled air and displays on a numerical readout and waveform tracing. (The capnograph used in this study was provided on loan by Nellcor Purtian Bennett, LLC, doing business as Covidien.) Continue reading “Ensuring child safety during common medical procedures”