The practice of regional anesthesia during the COVID-19 pandemic: an international survey of members of three regional anesthesia societies

Association between anesthesia technique and death after hip fracture repair for patients with COVID-19

PURPOSE

Patients with COVID-19 undergoing hip fracture surgeries have a 30-day mortality of up to 34%. We aimed to evaluate the association between anesthesia technique and 30-day mortality after hip fracture surgery in patients with COVID-19.

METHODS

After ethics approval, we performed a retrospective cohort analysis of the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program data set from January to December 2021. Inclusion criteria were age ≥ 19 yr, laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection within 14 days preoperatively, and hip fracture surgery under general anesthesia (GA) or spinal anesthesia (SA). Exclusion criteria were American Society of Anesthesiologists Physical Status V, ventilator dependence, international normalized ratio ≥ 1.5, partial thromboplastin time > 35 sec, and platelet count < 80 × 109 L-1. The primary outcome was all-cause 30-day mortality. The adjusted association between anesthetic technique and 30-day mortality was analyzed using multivariable logistic regression.

RESULTS

Of 23,045 patients undergoing hip fracture surgery, 331 patients met the study criteria. The median [interquartile range] age was 82 [74-88] yr, and 32.3% were male. The 30-day mortality rate was 10.0% (33/331) for the cohort (10.7%, 29/272 for GA vs 6.8%, 4/59 for SA; P = 0.51; standardized mean difference, 0.138). The use of SA, compared with GA, was not associated with decreased mortality (adjusted odds ratio, 0.61; 95% confidence interval, 0.21 to 1.8; E-value, 2.49).

CONCLUSION

Anesthesia technique was not associated with mortality in patients with COVID-19 undergoing hip fracture surgery. The findings were limited by a small sample size.

STUDY REGISTRATION

www.

CLINICALTRIALS

gov (NCT05133648); registered 24 November 2021.

Association between perioperative neuraxial local anesthetic neurotoxicity and arachnoiditis: a narrative review of published reports

BACKGROUND/IMPORTANCE

Arachnoiditis is a rare but devastating disorder caused by various insults, one of which is purported to be local anesthetic neurotoxicity following neuraxial blockade. However, the relationship between local anesthetics administered into the neuraxis and the development of arachnoiditis has not been clearly elucidated.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to summarize the existing complex body of literature and characterize both the essential features and strength of any association between neuraxial local anesthetic neurotoxicity and arachnoiditis with a view toward mitigating risk, enhancing prevention, and refining informed consent discussions.

EVIDENCE REVIEW

We reviewed all published reports of arachnoiditis attributed to local anesthetic neurotoxicity following perioperative neuraxial anesthesia. This narrative review was based on a systematic search methodology, which included articles published up until December 2022.

FINDINGS

Thirty-eight articles were included, comprising 130 patients, over one-half of which were published prior to this century and inconsistent with modern practice. Neuraxial techniques included 78 epidurals, 48 spinals, and 5 combined spinal-epidurals, mostly for obstetrics. Reporting of essential procedural data was generally incomplete. Overall, at least 57% of patients experienced complicated needle/catheter insertion, including paresthesia, pain, or multiple attempts, irrespective of technique. The onset of neurological symptoms ranged from immediate to 8 years after neuraxial blockade, while the pathophysiology of arachnoiditis, if described, was heterogeneous.

CONCLUSIONS

The existing literature attributing arachnoiditis to local anesthetic neurotoxicity is largely outdated, incomplete, and/or confounded by other potential causes, and thus insufficient to characterize the features and strength of any association.

Development and prospective validation of postoperative pain prediction from preoperative EHR data using attention-based set embeddings

Preoperative knowledge of expected postoperative pain can help guide perioperative pain management and focus interventions on patients with the greatest risk of acute pain. However, current methods for predicting postoperative pain require patient and clinician input or laborious manual chart review and often do not achieve sufficient performance. We use routinely collected electronic health record data from a multicenter dataset of 234,274 adult non-cardiac surgical patients to develop a machine learning method which predicts maximum pain scores on the day of surgery and four subsequent days and validate this method in a prospective cohort. Our method, POPS, is fully automated and relies only on data available prior to surgery, allowing application in all patients scheduled for or considering surgery. Here we report that POPS achieves state-of-the-art performance and outperforms clinician predictions on all postoperative days when predicting maximum pain on the 0-10 NRS in prospective validation, though with degraded calibration. POPS is interpretable, identifying comorbidities that significantly contribute to postoperative pain based on patient-specific context, which can assist clinicians in mitigating cases of acute pain.

Regional anaesthesia for ambulatory surgery

Regional anaesthesia (RA) has an important and ever-expanding role in ambulatory surgery. Specific practices vary depending on the preferences and resources of the anaesthesia team and hospital setting. It is used for various purposes, including as primary anaesthetic technique for surgery but also as postoperative analgesic modality. The limited duration of action of currently available local anaesthetics limits their application in postoperative pain control and enhanced recovery. The search for the holy grail of regional anaesthetics continues. Current evidence suggests that a peripheral nerve block performed with long-acting local anaesthetics in combination with intravenous or perineural dexamethasone gives the longest and most optimal sensory block. In this review, we outline some possible blocks for ambulatory surgery and additives to perform RA. Moreover, we give an update on local anaesthesia drugs and adjuvants, paediatric RA in ambulatory care and discuss the impact of RA by COVID-19.

Neuraxial anesthesia for abdominal surgery, beyond the pandemic: a feasibility pilot study of 70 patients in a suburban hospital

The aim of this study is to establish the feasibility of awake laparotomy under neuraxial anesthesia (NA) in a suburban hospital. A retrospective analysis of the results of a consecutive series of 70 patients undergoing awake abdominal surgery under NA at the Department of Surgery of our Hospital from February 11th, 2020 to October 20th, 2021 was conducted. The series includes 43 cases of urgent surgical care (2020) and 27 cases of elective abdominal surgery on frail patients (2021). Seventeen procedures (24.3%) required sedation to better control patient discomfort. Only in 4/70 (5.7%) cases, conversion to general anesthesia (GA) was necessary. Conversion to GA was not related to American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA) score or operative time. Only one of the four cases requiring conversion to GA was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) postoperatively. Fifteen patients (21.4%) required postoperative ICU support. A statistically non-significant association was observed between conversion to GA and postoperative ICU admission. The mortality rate was 8.5% (6 patients). Five out of six deaths occurred while in the ICU. All six were frail patients. None of these deaths was related to a complication of NA. Awake laparotomy under NA has confirmed its feasibility and safety in times of scarcity of resources and therapeutic restrictions, even in the most frail patients. We believe that this approach should be considered as an useful asset, especially for suburban hospitals.

Retailoring training programmes in anaesthesia and intensive care after the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

In this review, we want to collect all the adaptations that anaesthesiology training has faced because of the health crisis and social distancing measures resulting from coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19). We reviewed new teaching tools launched during the COVID-19 outbreak worldwide and particularly those implemented by the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) and the European Association of Cardiothoracic Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (EACTAIC).

RECENT FINDINGS

Globally, COVID-19 has interrupted health services and all aspects of training programmes. These unprecedented changes have led to teaching and trainee support innovation tools, focusing on online learning and simulation programmes. Airway management, critical care and regional anaesthesia, have been enhanced during the pandemic, while there were major obstacles in paediatrics, obstetrics and pain medicine.

SUMMARY

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered profoundly the functioning of health systems worldwide. Anaesthesiologists and trainees have fought on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19. As a result, training in anaesthesiology during the last 2 years has focused on managing patients in intensive care. New training programmes have been designed to continue teaching residents of this speciality, focusing on e-learning and advanced simulation. It is necessary to present a review describing the impact that this turbulent period has had on the different subsections of anaesthesiology and to review the innovative measures that have been implemented to address these possible deficits in education and training.