[Opinion of different professional categories about the intensity of procedural pain in adult intensive care units].

Objectives: to assess the procedures considered as the most painful by health personnel of two adult critical care units.

Methods: individual written survey with a questionnaire about 46 potentially painful procedures. Each individual has to estimate the pain intensity as well as the frequency of performance for each painful procedures.

[Acute pulmonary edema occurred during tocolytic treatment using nicardipine in a twin pregnancy. Report of three cases].

We report three cases of acute pulmonary edema that occurred during treatment by intravenous tocolysis using nicardipine in twin pregnancy patients with no previous heart problems. The three patients were admitted into our unit on account of the risk of premature birth after 29 to 32 weeks of amenorrhea. The treatment by intravenous tocolysis using nicardipine combined with glucocorticoids therapy had been undertaken in the previous maternity ward.

[Parasigmoid abscess revealed by anaerobic osteomyelitis].

We report the case of a 66 year-old-patient, who profited by a laminectomy T4 to T7 for spinal cord compression due to an osteomyelitis. Bacteriological samples showed positives gram cocci and Bacteroides fragilis by the culture. The systematic research of a primitive source permitted to find a parasigmoidis abscess, which was treated by a sigmoidectomy with a colorectal anastomosis.

[Preoperative evaluation of coronary circulation].

It is not easy to define a plan for the preoperative assessment of the coronary circulation: some studies carried out in the context of vascular surgery are contradictory and no method has a sensitivity and specificity of 100%. Nevertheless, it is essential to select patients with a high risk of perioperative cardiac complications so that their medical treatment can be reinforced or anatomical correction envisaged. A first assessment is obtained from the history, the clinical examination and simple investigations (resting ECG, chest X-ray).