Errors and omissions in anesthesia: a pilot study using a pilot's checklist.

There are recent concerns that anesthesiologists are becoming less skilled in providing general anesthesia for Cesarean delivery. We considered whether a verbal checklist would help in the preparation for this event. We created a list of items to be checked when preparing to administer general anesthesia for a Cesarean delivery using expert opinion.

Postoperative wound oxygen tension with epidural or intravenous analgesia: a prospective, randomized, single-blind clinical trial.

Background: Adequate tissue oxygen tension is an essential requirement for surgical-wound healing. The authors tested the hypothesis that epidural anesthesia and analgesia increases wound tissue oxygen tension compared with intravenous morphine analgesia.

Methods: In a prospective, randomized, blind clinical study, the authors allocated patients having major abdominal surgery (n = 32) to receive combined general and epidural anesthesia with postoperative patient-controlled epidural analgesia (epidural group, n = 16), or general anesthesia alone with postoperative patient-controlled intravenous analgesia (intravenous group, n = 16).