Protocol for Usability Testing and Validation of the ISO Draft International Standard 19223 for Lung Ventilators.

Background: Clinicians, such as respiratory therapists and physicians, are often required to set up pieces of medical equipment that use inconsistent terminology. Current lung ventilator terminology that is used by different manufacturers contributes to the risk of usage errors, and in turn the risk of ventilator-associated lung injuries and other conditions. Human factors and communication issues are often associated with ventilator-related sentinel events, and inconsistent ventilator terminology compounds these issues.

Technical communication: the effect of the double mask on anesthetic waste gas levels during pediatric mask inductions in dental offices.

A significant portion of office-based general anesthesia for pediatric patients is performed in dental offices and involves mask inductions with inhaled drugs. This can lead to significant pollution with waste gases. We assessed occupational exposure to anesthetic drugs during pediatric general anesthesia in dental offices and assessed the effectiveness of the "double mask.

Home noninvasive ventilation: what does the anesthesiologist need to know?

Treatment of chronic respiratory failure with noninvasive ventilation (NIV) is standard pediatric practice, and NIV systems are commonly used in the home setting. Although practice guidelines on the perioperative management of children supported with home NIV systems have yet to be published, increasingly these patients are referred for consultation regarding perioperative management. Just as knowledge of pharmacology underlies the safe prescription of medication, so too knowledge of biomedical design is necessary for the safe prescription of NIV therapy.

Morbidity in patients with or at high risk for obstructive sleep apnea after ambulatory laparoscopic gastric banding.

Considerable controversy exists about the perioperative management of patients at high risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in free-standing clinics. Eighty-eight percent of an American Society of Anesthesiologists expert panel felt that upper abdominal laparoscopic surgery could not be performed safely on an outpatient basis. We sought to review the incidence of major adverse events after outpatient laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB) in a high risk population for OSA at a free-standing facility.

Consensus statement: minimal criteria for reporting the systemic inflammatory response to cardiopulmonary bypass.

The lack of established cause and effect between putative mediators of inflammation and adverse clinical outcomes has been responsible for many failed anti-inflammatory interventions in cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Candidate interventions that impress in preclinical trials by suppressing a given inflammation marker might fail at the clinical trial stage because the marker of interest is not linked causally to an adverse outcome. Alternatively, there exist examples in which pharmaceutical agents or other interventions improve clinical outcomes but for which we are uncertain of any antiinflammatory mechanism.