Enhancing the utility of virtual surgical pre-assessment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual pre-assessment was introduced for all elective and semi-urgent surgeries to maintain surgical clinical services in the authors' Trust. This mainly involved telephone pre-assessments, although occasionally video technology was used. This had to be managed and maintained at a distance with little or no training or established method.

Morbidity after thoracoscopic resection of congenital pulmonary airway malformations (CPAM): single center experience over a decade.

Purpose: Video-assisted thoracoscopic (VATS) resection of CPAM in children is an established, albeit controversial strategy for its management. We report a 10-year single center experience.

Methods: All children underwent VATS (2008-2017) and their current status was reviewed.

Emergency anesthesia for evacuating a traumatic acute subdural hemorrhage in a child overdosed with hypertonic saline.

A previously healthy 1-year-old child with a traumatic acute subdural hemorrhage received 10 times higher dose of hypertonic saline inadvertently immediately before surgery. This case report describes deviations in fluid management needed to alleviate salt toxicity and its adverse effects during surgery under anesthesia perioperatively. The child made an uneventful recovery with no evident residual damage at follow-up.

Efficacy of paediatric anaesthetic trolleys: A call for a basic standard and layout.

Background: Providing safe anaesthesia to children especially in emergency situations goes hand in hand with instant availability of appropriately sized equipment and monitoring. This is best achieved using a designated paediatric anaesthetic trolley containing essential equipment. Guidance for the contents of such trolleys is neither explicit nor standard.