Cardiovascular Complications of Pregnancy.

The physiologic changes in pregnancy predispose the pregnant patient to a variety of potential cardiovascular complications. In this article, we discuss the major cardiovascular disorders of pregnancy and their management, highlight specific diagnostic challenges, and discuss new developments in the field. Topics covered in this article include venous thromboembolism, acute myocardial infarction, peripartum cardiomyopathy, and aortic dissection.

Time crunch: increasing the efficiency of assessment of technical surgical skill via brief video clips.

Background: Video review for assessment of surgical performance is gaining popularity but is time consuming for busy expert reviewers, making review delays inevitable. Decreasing review time and including nonexpert reviewers may facilitate more timely reviews. We hypothesized that a shorter duration video clip would not affect the quality of expert ratings compared with full-length review.

Developing a robust suturing assessment: validity evidence for the intracorporeal suturing assessment tool.

Background: Assessment tools specific to intracorporeal suturing are lacking. The purpose of this study was to validate a novel Intracorporeal Suturing Assessment Tool (ISAT) by comparing it with existing measures that have been reported to have validity evidence.

Methods: Videos of laparoscopic suturing were assessed by 3 blinded laparoscopic experts using the validated Global Operative Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills (GOALS) scale and the ISAT.