Inadvertent endobronchial intubation: A sentinel event.

Background: Unintentional bronchial intubation may result in serious complications such as lung collapse or pneumothorax. These complications amount to sentinel events should be reported, and a hospital sentinel event policy should be implemented, including corrective actions to prevent recurrence.

Methods: A 12-month prospective observational study in a multidisciplinary adult intensive care unit (ICU) to estimate the frequency of inadvertent bronchial intubation and its major sequels in intubated patients admitted to the unit.

Incidence of perioperative cardiac arrest: analysis of anesthetics over 18-year period.

Objective: Several studies have surveyed perioperative cardiac arrests and their outcomes, regardless of whether patients were successfully resuscitated or died. No such studies have originated from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is a study of perioperative cardiac arrests and their outcome in a Saudi General Hospital, over an 18-year period.

Benchmarking inadvertent perioperative hypothermia guidelines with the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

Objective: To improve standards of patients' care and safety, we benchmarked our practice guidelines of prevention of inadvertent perioperative hypothermia with those of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) of the United Kingdom.

Methods: The study started in November 2008 and lasted for 18 months and was conducted at the Armed Forces Hospital, Wadi Al-Dawasir, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The NICE clinical guidelines (CG65) published in April 2008 were downloaded from its website.

Intubation-induced tracheal stenosis -- the urgent need for permanent solution.

The most common site for the occurrence of intubation-induced tracheal damage is at the area in contact with the inflatable cuff. After the change from high-pressure to low-pressure cuffs, major tracheal lesions still continue to occur. This is a case of tracheal stenosis that occurred after 7 days of intubation with standard cuffed tube whose cuff pressure was assessed by subjective means.