Publications by authors named "Stephen Kowalski"

The Hewlett Packard Enterprise-Cray EX Frontier is the world's first and fastest exascale supercomputer, hosted at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee, United States. Frontier is a significant electricity consumer, drawing 8-30 MW; this massive energy demand produces significant waste heat, requiring extensive cooling measures. Although harnessing this waste heat for campus heating is a sustainability goal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the 30 °C-38 °C waste heat temperature poses compatibility issues with standard HVAC systems.

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Purpose: Emergency airway management can be associated with a range of complications including long-term neurologic injury and death. We studied the first-pass success rate with emergency airway management in a tertiary care trauma centre. Secondary outcomes were to identify factors associated with first-pass success and factors associated with adverse events peri-intubation.

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Objective: Orotracheal intubation is a life-saving procedure commonly performed in the Intensive Care unit and Emergency Department as a part of emergency airway management. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our center undertook a prospective observational study to characterize emergency intubation performed in the emergency department and critical care settings at Manitoba's largest tertiary hospital. During this study, a natural experiment emerged when a standardized "COVID-Protected Rapid Sequence Intubation Protocol" was implemented in response to the pandemic.

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Importance: Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) who use a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) and request elective surgery or procedure present a common clinical situation yet perioperative management is uncertain.

Objective: To investigate the safety of a standardized perioperative DOAC management strategy.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The Perioperative Anticoagulation Use for Surgery Evaluation (PAUSE) cohort study conducted at 23 clinical centers in Canada, the United States, and Europe enrolled and screened patients from August 1, 2014, through July 31, 2018.

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Background: Spinal anesthesia is the most common technique for cesarean section. The conventional local anesthetic dose has been decreasing over time to 8-12.5 mg of bupivacaine.

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Objectives: Earlier extubation after cardiac surgery is reported to have benefits on length of stay and complication rates, but the influence on postoperative delirium remains unclear. We sought to determine the effect of earlier extubation on delirium after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Methods: A single-center retrospective review of consecutive isolated coronary artery bypass grafting patients from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2015, was conducted.

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Background The perioperative management of patients who take a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) for atrial fibrillation and require treatment interruption for an elective surgery/procedure is a common clinical scenario for which best practices are uncertain. The Perioperative Anticoagulant Use for Surgery Evaluation (PAUSE) study is designed to address this unmet clinical need. We discuss the rationale for the PAUSE design and analysis plan as well as the rationale supporting the perioperative DOAC protocol.

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Purpose: An increasing number of thoracic decortications have been performed in Manitoba, from five in 2007 to 45 in 2014. The primary objective of this study was to define the epidemiology of decortications in Manitoba. The secondary objective was to compare patients who underwent decortication due to primary infectious vs non-infectious etiology with respect to their perioperative outcomes.

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Background: Cardiac surgery induces many physiologic changes including major inflammatory and sympathetic nervous system responses. Here, we conducted a single-centre pilot study to generate hypotheses on the potential immune impact of adding high spinal anaesthesia to general anaesthesia during cardiac surgery in adults. We hypothesized that this strategy, previously shown to blunt the sympathetic response and improve pain management, could reduce the undesirable systemic inflammatory responses caused by cardiac surgery.

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Background: Cerebral oxygen desaturation during cardiac surgery has been associated with adverse perioperative outcomes. Before a large multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the impact of preventing desaturations on perioperative outcomes, the authors undertook a randomized prospective, parallel-arm, multicenter feasibility RCT to determine whether an intervention algorithm could prevent desaturations.

Methods: Eight Canadian sites randomized 201 patients between April 2012 and October 2013.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major global problem and affects approximately 10 million peoples annually; therefore has a substantial impact on the health-care system throughout the world. In this article, we have summarized various aspects of specific intensive care management in patients with TBI including the emerging evidence mainly after the Brain Trauma Foundation (BTF) 2007 and also highlighted the scope of the future therapies. This review has involved the relevant clinical trials and reviews (from 1 January 2007 to 31 March 2013), which specifically discussed about the topic.

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Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a growing epidemic throughout the world and may present as major global burden in 2020. Some intensive care units throughout the world still have no access to specialized monitoring methods, equipments and other technologies related to intensive care management of these patients; therefore, this review is meant for providing generalized supportive measurement to this subgroup of patients so that evidence based management could minimize or prevent the secondary brain injury.

Methods: Therefore, we have included the PubMed search for the relevant clinical trials and reviews (from 1 January 2007 to 31 March 2013), which specifically discussed about the topic.

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Background: Most of the bad outcomes in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are related to the presence of a high incidence of pre-hospital secondary brain insults. Therefore, knowledge of these variables and timely management of the disease at the pre-hospital period can significantly improve the outcome and decrease the mortality. The Brain Trauma Foundation guideline on "Prehospital Management" published in 2008 could provide the standardized protocols for the management of patients with TBI; however, this guideline has included the relevant papers up to 2006.

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Purpose: Pulmonary dysfunction commonly occurs following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, increasing morbidity and mortality. We hypothesized that thoracic epidural anesthesia (TEA) would improve pulmonary function and would decrease complications in patients undergoing CABG surgery.

Methods: This prospective, randomized, controlled trial was conducted with Ethics Board approval.

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Objective: To evaluate the effect of a short period of mechanical ventilation (3 hours) versus immediate extubation (within 1 hour of surgery) on pulmonary function, gas exchange, and pulmonary complications after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

Design: Prospective randomized study.

Setting: University teaching hospital.

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