Anesthetic management for a patient with severe mento-sternal contracture: difficult airway and scarce venous access -A case report-.

There are many problems in the anesthetic management of patients with scar contracture. In this case, a 41-year-old male with severe scar contracture on his face, neck, anterior chest, and both shoulders underwent surgery for resurfacing with flaps. We tried to awake fiberoptic orotracheal intubation with GlideScope® Video laryngoscope guide after surgical release of contracture under local anesthesia.

Damage to the cuff of EMG tube at endotracheal intubation by using a lightwand -A case report-.

Electromyogpraphic endotracheal tube (EMG tube) is a new device used to monitor recurrent laryngeal nerve integrity during thyroid surgery. The EMG tube has 2 pairs of electrodes on the surface of silicon-based tube reached to inner space of tube cuff. We experienced an unusual endotracheal tube-related problem from the distinct structural feature of the EMG tube.

Prostaglandin regulation of gastric slow waves and peristalsis.

Gastric emptying depends on functional coupling of slow waves between the corpus and antrum, to allow slow waves initiated in the gastric corpus to propagate to the pyloric sphincter and generate gastric peristalsis. Functional coupling depends on a frequency gradient where slow waves are generated at higher frequency in the corpus and drive the activity of distal pacemakers. Simultaneous intracellular recording from corpus and antrum was used to characterize the effects of PGE(2) on slow waves in the murine stomach.