Audio-visual recordings of doctor-patient interactions might have the potential to improve the consent process. Ivermee and Yentis report on the attitudes of postnatal women, anaesthetists, obstetricians and midwives towards audio recording of consent discussions. Most participants found the idea acceptable, yet some staff had concerns about confidentiality, technical difficulties, and the possible detrimental effects on the doctor-patient relationship and consent process. These concerns were not shared by most postnatal women. Combeer and Iqbal make a case for embracing such opportunities to improve patient care, and provide a balanced account on the pros and cons of audiovisual recordings of patient care. Such recordings are likely to become more common and our engagement is required to ensure this leads to positive outcomes for patients and anaesthetists.
Good quality antenatal information provision is a vital part of preparation for labour. Brinkler et al. surveyed 903 postnatal women across 28 London hospitals on the provision of anaesthetic and analgesic information during pregnancy and delivery. Concerningly, only 9% and 12.1% of women recalled receiving antenatal information covering all aspects of labour analgesia and caesarean section, respectively. Only 68.7% felt confident about their analgesic choices as a result. The authors call for better ways to deliver information to expectant mothers and this might require more collaborative ways of working.
Maternal satisfaction with anaesthetic care is a complex metric. Yurashevich et al. evaluated data from 4297 postpartum women to establish determinants of dissatisfaction with anaesthesia care in labour and delivery. Factors associated with maternal dissatisfaction following vaginal delivery included: pain intensity during the first and second stages of labour; postpartum pain intensity; delays of more than 15 minutes in providing epidural analgesia; and postpartum headache. Postpartum pain, headache and pruritus were associated with dissatisfaction after caesarean delivery. These findings reinforce the contribution of the anaesthetist to a positive birth experience, which might be improved by more rapid responses to epidural analgesia requests and by contributing more to postoperative pain management.
The first international consensus statement on the use of uterotonic agents during caesarean section has now been published on Early View. This was our top paper on social media in July, with an Altmetric score of 225! It is essential reading for all obstetric anaesthetists and obstetricians, and it may also be useful to those sitting the FRCA exam.
Haemostatic activation during cardiopulmonary bypass may lead to coagulopathy, or paradoxically, postoperative thromboembolic complications. Ho et al. evaluated the association between platelet dysfunction and adverse outcomes in cardiac surgical patients. They found that for every 1% increase in platelet dysfunction during the rewarming phase of cardiopulmonary bypass, there was an 1% increase in the incidence of adverse postoperative events. This was a secondary analysis of data obtained from the transfusion avoidance in cardiac surgery trial – which was a stepped-wedge, cluster randomised controlled trial. In the accompanying editorial, Charlesworth and Agarwal succinctly describe the basics of a stepped-wedge cluster design and discuss how the authors recycled an old dataset to answer a new research question. Importantly, they stress that the study by Ho et al. is not ‘salami sliced’ – an issue that Anaesthesia has a clear stance on.
Figure 1 A schematic of a simple five cluster study conducted over six months. Clusters can be, for example, collections of different wards, theatres, hospitals or sites. Each month (or day, week or year), one cluster is randomised to cross over from control (black) to intervention (green). At the end of the trial, all participants are receiving the intervention.
Unplanned admission to critical care is associated with poor patient outcomes and increasingly used as a performance metric. Shelley et al. report on the association between anaesthetic technique and unplanned critical care admission after thoracic lung resection surgery. Their multicentre retrospective audit includes 11,208 patients undergoing lung resection surgery in 16 NHS thoracic surgical centres between 2013 and 2014. The most striking finding was that patients receiving total intravenous anaesthesia or thoracic epidural analgesia were less likely to have an unplanned admission to critical care. Licker remind us that these findings should be interpreted with caution for several reasons, and the conclusions drawn have already sparked much debate on Twitter. However, these findings are certainly hypothesis generating and should pave the way for well-designed prospective studies.
Current DAS guidelines recommend a scalpel-based technique as first-line for an emergency front of neck airway, but prospective data to support this are lacking. The recent study by Rees et al., which was recently featured in the popular #FrontOfNeck TweetChat, challenge these recommendations. DAS guidelines are only one of 38 published airway management algorithms, as highlighted in a directed review comparing and describing all difficult airway management algorithms published over the past 20 years. Whilst the frequency of algorithm publication has increased, many are overwhelmingly similar and data on implementation and outcomes are limited. An endorsed universal single airway algorithm is needed. Watch this space!
Figure 2 Algorithm publication frequency from 1998 to 2018 with the number of publications per year (blue bars) and the number of cumulative algorithms published (orange bars).
Elsewhere, Jelacic et al. introduced an aviation-style computerised pre-induction checklist, as part of a quality improvement project, and demonstrated a reduction in the number of failures to perform all pre-induction steps. Carvalho et al. found that pre-operative voice evaluation of vowel phenomes has the potential to predict a difficult laryngoscopy. This is a novel finding and its potential incorporation in current airway assessment strategies requires further investigation. Crewdson et al., in a retrospective analysis of the Trauma Audit Research Network database, evaluated emergency airway interventions for patients admitted to major trauma centre. Over 70% of emergency department tracheal intubations were performed within 30 minutes of arrival. Worryingly, patients who required pre-hospital airway support and did not receive it had a higher mortality. This work suggests an unmet need for pre-hospital advanced airway management. Also, Lukannek et al. report on the development and validation of the Score for the Prediction of Postoperative Respiratory Complications (SPORC‐2) to predict the requirement for early postoperative tracheal re‐intubation.
Figure 3 Modifications made to the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) pre‐anaesthetic induction patient safety checklist to create computerised version used for this study. The APSF pre‐anaesthetic induction patient safety checklist is shown on the left (a). A screenshot of the computerised pre‐induction anaesthesia checklist is shown on the right (b). Functionality of Checklist Navigator includes a checklist pull down menu, ‘Remote Display’ button, a case information window, ‘Reset Checklist’, ‘Close’, ‘Skip’ and ‘Undo’ button.
Promoting sustainable healthcare to medical practice has recently been recognised as an essential element of undergraduate medical education by the General Medical Council. Anaesthetists have been at the forefront of reducing the environmental impact of healthcare, and Shelton and White provide guidance on the leading role anaesthetists can play in developing and teaching this element of the undergraduate curriculum. They advocate a model from the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare which reduces environmental impact without adversely affecting health.
Figure 4 Driver diagram of the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare principles of sustainable clinical practice.
In our latest ‘Clinical Consequences’, Shah and Carlisle discuss and review the evidence supporting the use of cuffed tracheal tubes in paediatric anaesthesia. An updated meta-analysis shows they were changed one-sixth as often as uncuffed tubes. Sore throat was also less common with cuffed tubes, and the rates of laryngospasm and stridor were similar. Over in Anaesthesia Reports, an editorial from Dalay et al. summarises all the key learning points from the first issue, and Watton et al. report a case series of midpoint transverse process to pleura catheter placement for postoperative analgesia following video‐assisted thoracoscopic surgery.
Finally, we are looking forward to seeing everyone at Annual Congress in Glasgow next month. The Anaesthesia journal session takes place on Friday morning and Kariem El-Boghdadly will present the Anaesthesia article of the year. We look forward to finding out who made it into this year’s #AnaesTop10.
See you in Glasgow!
Dr Akshay Shah and Professor Andrew Klein
#TheAnaesthesiaBlog 