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IntroductionOpioid overdoses claim tens of thousands of lives every year. Many of these deaths might be prevented if overdose-reversal medications such as naloxone are administered in a timely manner. Drones may help overcome barriers to timely arrival on scene for opioid overdoses. This study analyses the time required for a drone carrying naloxone to traverse various distances, simulating the response time for a drone to the scene of an opioid overdose. For comparison, we used the time required for ambulances to traverse similar distances while responding to the scene of actual or suspected opioid overdoses.MethodsFifty flight trials, using a modified Dà-Jiāng Innovations (DJI) ‘Inspire 2’ drone, were conducted across seven distances, and the travel time for the drone was then compared with historical response time data from 200 actual or suspected opioid overdose cases that occurred within Detroit, Michigan.ResultsWe determined with 95% certainty that drone arrival times were discernibly quicker than ambulance arrival times at all distances where sufficient data were available to perform statistical comparisons including 0.5 km, 1.0 km, 1.5 km, 2.0 km and 3.0 km.ConclusionWe have shown that a drone is capable of travelling several ranges of straight-line (ie, ‘as the crow flies’) distance faster than an ambulance. Further exploration into the use of drones to deliver life-saving therapies in urban and rural settings is warranted. Head-to-head prospective trials that consider the practical challenges of medical drone delivery are needed to better understand the viability of incorporating this technology into existing emergency response infrastructure.

We describe a case of an 18-year-old male who developed a supraorbital neuroma following facial trauma that occurred 2 years earlier. He presented with complaints of persistent facial pain and migraines despite successful laceration repair and removal of foreign bodies at the time of injury. A non-contrast computed tomography (CT) scan of the orbits revealed an enlarged supraorbital nerve with remodeling and expansion of the supraorbital notch, suggesting a neuroma. The patient underwent orbitotomy with excision of neuroma (confirmed histologically) and experienced a complete resolution of periorbital pain.

BackgroundSome pediatric centers prefer to extubate their patients in the operating rooms (ORs) while others prefer post-anesthesia care units (PACUs) for the same.ObjectivesTo share our retrospective experience of 214 pediatric adenotonsillectomy (T&A) patients’ cohort extubated in our pediatric PACU during a seven-month retrospective study-period.Materials and MethodsAfter institutional review board approval for retrospective chart review, institutional electronic surgical database was used to identify patients who underwent T&A and the peri-anesthetic records were obtained from patients’ electronic medical records and/or from hospital paper records.ResultsPatients’ tracheas were extubated in average 11 minutes (standard deviation 8 minutes) after arrival to PACU care and only one patient required tracheal re-intubation. Patients were ready for discharge from PACU in average 56 minutes (standard deviation 20 minutes) thus averaging only 44 minutes (standard deviation 20 minutes) after their tracheas had been extubated.ConclusionSummarily for re-validating or refuting our results, institutions can prospectively create PACU extubation quality improvement projects to discern if tracheal extubation in PACU of all or some pediatric surgical patients is beneficial when their rapid turnover surgeries warrant anesthesia providers to not attempt their tracheal extubation in ORs.