Local and Regional Anesthesia (Jun 2017)
Spinal anesthesia; the Holy Grail?
Abstract
Marieke Voet, Cornelis SlagtDepartment of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Care, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The NetherlandsAfter reading the paper recently published in Local and Regional Anesthesia by Whitaker et al:1 “Spinal anesthesia after intraoperative cardiac arrest during general anesthesia in an infant,” we would like to share our thoughts. In a recently published paper by Habre et al,2 the incidence of severe critical events in pediatric anesthesia was investigated. In 261 hospitals across Europe (33 countries), severe critical events were registered. In total, 31,127 anesthetic procedures in 30,874 children were included. Age, medical history, and physical condition were the major risk factors for a serious critical event. In total, 1,478 patients had a critical event, most of them during or immediately after anesthesia. Children younger than 3 years of age are at risk for critical events.View the original paper by Whitaker and colleagues.
