Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 

About: Anaesthesia and Intensive Care is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Intensive care & Medicine. It has an ISSN identifier of 0310-057X. Over the lifetime, 6065 publications have been published receiving 92118 citations.

The Medical Emergency Team.

Abstract: The concept of a Medical Emergency Team was developed in order to rapidly identify and manage seriously ill patients at risk of cardiopulmonary arrest and other high-risk conditions The aim of this study was to describe the utilization and outcome of Medical Emergency Team interventions over a one-year period at a teaching hospital in South Western Sydney Data was collected prospectively using a standardized form Cardiopulmonary resuscitation occurred in 148/522 (28%) calls Alerting the team using the specific condition criteria occurred in 253/522 (48%) calls and on physiological/pathological abnormality criteria in 121/522 (23%) calls Survival rate to hospital discharge following cardiopulmonary arrest was low (29%), compared with other medical emergencies (76%)

The Australian Incident Monitoring Study: an analysis of 2000 incident reports.

Abstract: The Australian Patient Safety Foundation was formed in 1987; it was decided to set up and co-ordinate the Australian Incident Monitoring Study as a function of this Foundation; 90 hospitals and practices joined the study. Participating anaesthetists were invited to report, on an anonymous and voluntary basis, any unintended incident which reduced, or could have reduced, the safety margin for a patient. Any incident could be reported, not only those which were deemed "preventable" or were thought to involve human error. The Mark I AIMS form was developed which incorporated features and concepts from several other studies. All the incidents in this symposium were reported using this form, which contains general instructions to the reporter, key words and space for a narrative of the incident, structured sections for what happened (with subsections for circuitry incidents, circuitry involved, equipment involved, pharmacological incidents and airway incidents), why it happened (with subsections for factors contributing to the incident, factors minimising the incident and suggested corrective strategies), the type of anaesthesia and procedure, monitors in use, when and where the incident happened, the experience of the personnel involved, patient age and a classification of patient outcome. Enrollment, reporting and data-handling procedures are described. Data on patient outcome are presented; this is correlated with the stages at which the incident occurred and with the ASA status of the patients. The locations at which the incidents occurred and the types of procedures, the sets of incidents analysed in detail and a breakdown of the incidents due to drugs are also presented.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The ASA Physical Status Classification: Inter-observer Consistency:

Abstract: The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification system has previously been shown to be inconsistently applied by anaesthetists. One hundred and sixty questionnaires were sent out to all specialist anaesthetists in Hong Kong. Ten hypothetical patients, identical to those of a similar study undertaken 20 years ago, each with different types and degrees ofphysical disability were described. Respondents were asked about their country of training and type of anaesthetic practice and to assign an ASA classification status for each patient. Ninety-seven questionnaires were returned (61%) after two mailings. Agreement for each patient within groups, between groups and overall comparisons were made. Percentage of agreement was between 31 to 85%. Overall correlation was only fair in all groups (Kappa indices: 0.21-0.4). We found that the current pattern of inter-observer inconsistency of classification was similar to that 20 years ago and exaggerated between locally and overseas trained specialists (P<0.05). The validity of the ASA system, its usefulness and the need for a new, more precise scoring system is discussed.

The Australian Incident Monitoring Study. Errors, incidents and accidents in anaesthetic practice.

Abstract: Human error is a pervasive and normal part of everyday life and is of interest to the anaesthetist because errors may lead to accidents. Definitions of, and the relationships between, errors, incid...