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2023 JUN 17 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week -- Fresh data on anxiety disorders are presented in a new report. According [...]

2023 JUN 17 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week -- Fresh data on anxiolytics sedatives and hypnotics are presented in a new [...]

2022 APR 2 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week -- New research on Health and Medicine - Emergency Medicine is the subject [...]

A special program to sedate children having magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appears to reduce the failure rate due to inability to lie still and decrease the time required to perform the scan. A university hospital set up a clinic with a specially trained team to sedate and monitor sedated children having MRI scans of the head. Prior to the clinic, nurses sedated the child in the pediatric clinic and remained with the child until recovery. Results were compared between 222 children sedated prior to the program and 215 children sedated after the program began. The failure rate due to inadequate sedation dropped from 15% to 2%. The average procedure duration with contrast medium fell from 72 minutes to 59 minutes, and the procedure duration without contrast medium fell from 59 minutes to 47 minutes. Three children required treatment for lack of oxygen, which points up the need for careful monitoring and skilled personnel. All responded to treatment.

Circumcision of newborns is the most often performed operation in males in this country; as many as 90 percent of newborn boys were circumcised between the end of the 1940s and the early 1970s. After a decline in popularity following recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics in the 1970s, newer evidence has been released concerning the advantages of circumcision and the number of procedures is likely to increase. Circumcision is usually performed without anesthesia and it is clear that infants feel pain. A review is presented of the effectiveness of current methods of pain relief during circumcision. Evidence that infants feel pain during and after circumcision is discussed. They cry with greatest urgency during the most invasive part of the surgery, but their crying returns to baseline levels within 10 minutes after surgery. Physiological indicators such as heart rate and blood pressure also change during the procedure, but return to normal after several minutes. Long-lasting adverse effects are not noted, and complications and mortality due to infant circumcision are negligible compared with the risks associated with anesthesia use. Dorsal penile nerve block (DPNB; injection of lidocaine into a nerve in the penis) reduces the stress of the procedure, but few cases using DPNB have been reported. Complications, such as bruising or injection into veins or arteries, can result. In addition, lidocaine can have adverse effects on newborns, even at low concentrations, if absorbed into the body. A satisfactory topically applied anesthetic agent for this procedure has not been found. Newborns can be given acetaminophen (a pain-reliever) in the postoperative period. This drug is widely used and can be used safely in newborns. A sucrose-flavored pacifier given during the operation has been found to reduce crying by more than 50 percent; this approach deserves further investigation. Because circumcision in newborns is so safe and so simple, any pain-relieving method should be virtually risk-free to justify its use. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

To evaluate the merits of an anesthetic agent (lidocaine) as a nerve block to prevent pain during infant circumcision, a prospective, controlled study of 51 infants was carried out. The subjects were divided into three groups: group 1, 23 infants who received a lidocaine penile nerve block involving injection of lidocaine into the base of the penis; group 2, 22 infants who received a saline (inactive) solution injected in the same manner; and group 3, 7 infants who received no injection. During the circumcision and for five minutes afterward, the babies' pulse rates were monitored. Staff members and the surgeon graded infant irritability on a six-point scale, and the surgeon graded bleeding on a three-point scale. Results showed that irritability was significantly less for the lidocaine group than for controls (the other two groups combined). In most cases, observers could identify which infants had been anesthetized, and in all cases, unanesthetized infants were correctly identified. The pulse rates of anesthetized infants did not increase during the procedure, while those of the control group rose by almost 30 percent. Oxygen saturation (a measure of the amount of oxygen attached to its carrier, hemoglobin) declined for the control group, but not for the lidocaine-treated group. The results show that dorsal penile nerve block with lidocaine reduces infant stress during circumcision. It is hoped that more physicians will take this into account and use lidocaine anesthesia for this procedure. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Propofol (2, 6 di-isopropylphenol) is a sedative hypnotic agent solubilized in a 10% Intralipid base. (1,2) It has become a popular agent outside its primary area of use, the operating [...]

Table of Contents Introduction Patients & Methods Results Discussion References Introduction Laryngeal mask airway (LMA) was invented by Archie Brain in 1981 and came to clinical practice in 1992. It [...]