Choice of anesthesia and intraoperative monitoring for lower extremity revascularization.

The prevalence of significant coronary artery disease re-enforces the importance of careful preoperative and intraoperative management in patients undergoing lower extremity revascularization. This article presents a practical approach toward the evaluation of anesthetic risk and the proper use of anesthetic agents and monitoring devices to minimize morbidity. The role of general and regional anesthetic agents is discussed, and complications of both techniques are presented.

Premedication with oral and transdermal clonidine provides safe and efficacious postoperative sympatholysis.

We studied 61 patients undergoing elective major non-cardiac surgery in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-control clinical trial to test the hypothesis that the addition of clonidine to a standardized general anesthetic could safely provide postoperative sympatholysis for patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. Patients were allocated randomly to receive either placebo (n = 31) or clonidine (n = 30). The treatment group received premedication with a transdermal clonidine system (0.

Value of routine dilation and curettage at the time of interval sterilization.

Four hundred thirty-four patients underwent tubal ligation at the Beth Israel Hospital during a 27-month period. In 272 cases (62.7%), a dilation and curettage was performed as a routine part of the tubal ligation procedure to ensure that luteal phase pregnancy, if present, would be interrupted.