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COVID-19 is mainly considered an “adult pandemic,” but it also has strong implications for children and consequently for pediatric anesthesia. Despite the lethality of SARS-CoV-2 infection being directly correlated with age, children have equally experienced the negative impacts of this pandemic.
Sedation and anesthesia are widely used to relieve pain and ensure cooperation during elective diagnostic and medical procedures in the pediatric population. However, there is currently limited evidence about the recovery trajectory following deep sedation or general anesthesia for such procedures in children.
A contemporary, well-validated instrument for the measurement of behavior change in children after general anesthesia is lacking. The Post Hospitalization Behavior Questionnaire for Ambulatory Surgery (PHBQ-AS) has been developed as an updated version of the original Post Hospitalization Behavior Questionnaire (PHBQ) to better reflect the current patient population and modern anesthetic practices.
Perioperative respiratory adverse events are the most common cause of critical events in children undergoing anesthesia and surgery. While many risk factors remain unmodifiable, there are numerous anesthetic management decisions which can impact the incidence and impact of these events, especially in at-risk children.
Britta Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg AM FAHMS MD, PhD, DEAA, FANZA Chair of Paediatric anaesthesia, University of Western Australia; Consultant
Multimodal analgesia is employed in paediatric pain management to maximise analgesia and minimise side effects. Tramadol is dosed at 1–1.5 mg/kg to treat severe pain in children but the assay for tramadol in plasma samples for pharmacokinetic and toxicology studies does not often consider concurrently administered medications.
Difficult airway management in children is associated with significant morbidity. This narrative review on error traps in airway management aims to highlight the common pitfalls and proposes solutions to optimize best practices for pediatric difficult airway management. We have categorized common errors of pediatric difficult airway management into three main error traps.
Perioperative respiratory adverse events (PRAE) are a main cause of morbidity and mortality in paediatric anaesthesia. Clinicians need to be able to predict their patients' risk of PRAE to plan their care. Clinical risk prediction tools have been developed to assist with pre-operative risk stratification; however, validation outside the contexts of their development is limited. In this study, we test the ability of common risk prediction tools to identify patients at high risk of PRAE in general anaesthesia.
Obesity is linked to altered lung function and increased perioperative respiratory adverse events (PRAEs). We examined the effects of obesity, respiratory symptoms, and posture on PRAEs, lung mechanics, and ventilation distribution in children undergoing general anesthesia.
The social determinants of health, as described by the World Health Organisation (WHO), are 'the non-medical factors' that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. According to the WHO, social determinants of health account for between 30-55% of health outcomes, and children can be particularly vulnerable to their impacts.