REGIONAL ANESTHESIA FOR NEUROSURGERY.

During neurosurgery procedures it is vital to assure optimal cerebral perfusion and oxygenation. Despite physiological autoregulation of brain perfusion, maintaining hemodynamic stability and good oxygenation during anesthesia is vital for success. General anesthesia with mechanical ventilation and current drugs provide excellent hemodynamic condition and it is the first choice for most neurosurgery procedures. However, sometimes it is very hard to avoid brief increase or decrease in blood pressure especially during period of intense pain, or without pain stimulation. This could be detrimental for patients presented with high intracranial pressure and brain edema. Modifying anesthesia depth or treatment with vasoactive drugs usually is needed to overcome such circumstances. On the other hand it is important to wake the patients quickly after anesthesia for neurological exam. That is why regional anesthesia of scalp and spine could show beneficial effects by decreasing pain stimuli and hemodynamic variability with sparing effect of anesthetics drugs. Also regional techniques provide excellent postoperative pain relief, especially after spinal surgery.

Implementing the Surgical Apgar Score in patients with trauma hip fracture.

BACKGROUND: Trauma hip fractures in elderly patients are associated with high postoperative long-term morbidity and mortality and premature death. The high mortality in these patients can be explained by various factors, including the fracture itself; the preoperative poor condition and comorbidities of these patients; the influence of stressors, such as surgery and type of anaesthesia, on the patient's condition; and the postoperative development of major complications, such as cardiac failure, pulmonary embolism, pneumonia, deep venous thrombosis and acute renal failure. Thus, the Surgical Apgar Score (SAS) could be a valuable tool for objective risk stratification of patients immediately after surgery, and to enable patients with higher risk to receive postoperative ICU care and good management both during and after the hospital stay. METHODS: The SAS was calculated retrospectively from the handwritten anaesthesia records of 43 trauma hip fracture patients treated operatively in the University Hospital Centre Zagreb over a 1-year period. The primary endpoints were the 30-days major postoperative complications and mortality, length of the ICU and hospital stay, and 6-months major complications development. Statistical analysis was applied to compare SAS with the patients' perioperative variables. RESULTS: A SAS≤4 in the trauma hip fracture patients was a significant predictor for the 30-days major postoperative complications with 80% specificity (95% CI: 0.587-0.864, p=0.0111). However, the SAS was not significant in the prediction of 30-days mortality (95% CI: 0.468-0.771, p=0.2238) and 6-months mortality (95% CI: 0.497-0.795, p=0.3997) as primary endpoints in the hip fracture surgery patients. CONCLUSION: The SAS shows how intraoperative events affect postoperative outcomes. Calculating the SAS in the operating theatre provides immediate, reliable, real-time feedback information about patient postoperative risk. The results of this study indicate that all trauma hip fracture patients with SAS≤4 should go to the ICU postoperatively and should be under intensive surveillance both during the hospital stay and after hospital discharge.