Can parturients identify the midline during neuraxial block placement?

Study Objective: To determine whether parturients can reliably identify their midline during epidural or spinal needle insertion, and to determine whether parturient feedback helps the anesthesiologist successfully identify the midline.

Design: Survey instrument completed by anesthesiologists.

Setting: Labor and delivery unit of a university-based, tertiary-care hospital.

Complete separation of the tube from the mask during removal of a disposable laryngeal mask airway.

Purpose: To describe a complication of the disposable laryngeal mask airway (LMA).

Clinical Features: A 23-yr-old woman underwent a wide local excision of a chest wall melanoma and sentinel node biopsy under general anesthesia. During use of a single-use LMA-Unique(TM), the airway tube became completely separated from the distal mask (backplate).

Alterations in cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of somatostatin-like immunoreactivity in chronic pain patients.

Concentrations of somatostatin-like immunoreactivity in cerebrospinal fluid were significantly reduced in chronic pain patients compared to control patients without chronic pain. This difference was not influenced by demographic or clinical characteristics. Somatostatin has been shown to be a neurotransmitter in animal nociception; pharmacologic doses of this substance have moderated human pain.