Optimizing transfusion in vascular surgery: is bloodless surgery an option?

The prospect of surgery without blood loss is an emerging reality. Use of a blood conservation strategy is gaining increasing recognition as a sound and practical approach, especially for the majority of large blood loss surgeries. However, critical situations still occur in which transfusions are necessary or unavoidable for the short-term survival of the patient. The decision-making processes for determining when to transfuse, which blood products to give, and how much are presented here with an evaluation of the risks of transfusion and a discussion on blood conservation strategies. Modalities that may be used in such strategies include restricted phlebotomy, the implementation of restrictive transfusion triggers, acute normovolemic hemodilution, intraoperative and postoperative blood salvage, and refined operative techniques to achieve meticulous hemostasis. In addition, the proper use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents well before surgery can reduce the number of units transfused. The risks and costs of allogeneic blood transfusions underscore the need for and value of blood conservation techniques. Increasingly, hospitals are adopting blood conservation strategies as part of their routine practice. Blood conservation is a rapidly evolving field in which active research is expanding our understanding of the molecular, physiologic, and clinical aspects of hematopoiesis, circulatory response, coagulation enigmas, artificial oxygen carriers, and the impact of anemia on organ function. Ongoing research offers the possibility of replacement or elimination of allogeneic blood transfusions in a variety of clinical settings.     

Can intuition in surgery by learned?

Intuition, even at the end of the 20th century, has decisive significance in the field of medicine. Intuition within the medical field is understood to be a type of thinking based on experience, but without conscious recourse to its situations and thought processes; rather, it represents an act without reflection and one determining our medical actions to some extent. It is a cognitive process, an intuitive gain in recognition on the basis of experiential values called up from memory. Intuition is a combination of knowledge, ability, endurance, intellectual abilities, and discoursive methods of recognition, in short, the abilities of an expert. To become an expert, one must go through the stations of surgical training. In these the knowledge is imparted, which leads via decision-making to diagnosis and therapy. Intuition in the sense of the definition as experiential thinking cannot be learnt, but it can be schooled. The prerequisites for this are analytic thinking, expert knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge.     

Are pedicled flaps feasible in robotic surgery? Report of an anatomical study of the kite flap in conventional surgery versus robotic surgery

Reconstruction of cutaneous defects of the hand has dramatically progressed. It should also benefit from the development of robot-assisted surgery. The aim of the present study was to consider the feasibility of a kite flap in robotic surgery. Two cadaver hands were used in this study, one for a conventional procedure, and one for a robotic surgical procedure using a da Vinci Si robot. The operative duration was measured, and all difficulties encountered during the procedures were reported. The total duration of the intervention was 19 minutes with the conventional procedure and 30 minutes with the robotic technique. Some difficulties were encountered, related both to lack of specific instrumentation and haptic feedback. Robotic surgery presents interesting advantages such as the suppression of physiological tremor, increased degrees of freedom, and enhanced precision and accuracy of hand maneuvers. In this study, it allowed the realization of a pedicled flap without any external help.     

��Oriental anthropometry�� in plastic surgery

Background:

According to Chinese medicine, the acupuncture-points'' (acupoints) locations are proportionally and symmetrically distributed in well-defined compartment zones on the human body surface Oriental Anthropometry” (OA). Acupoints, if considered as aesthetic-loci, might be useful as reference guides in plastic surgery (PS).

Aim:

This study aimed to use aesthetic-loci as anatomical reference in surgical marking of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Method:

This was an observational study based on aesthetic surgeries performed in private clinic. This study was based on 106 cases, comprising of 102 women and 4 men, with ages varying from 07 to 73 years, and with heights of between 1.34 m and 1.80 m. Patients were submitted to aesthetic surgical planning by relating aesthetic-loci to conventional surgical marking, including breast surgeries, abdominoplasty, rhytidoplasty, blepharoplasty, and hair implant. The aesthetic-surgical-outcome (ASO) of the patients was assessed by a team of plastic surgeons (who were not involved in the surgical procedures) over a follow-up period of one year by using a numeric-rating-scale in percentage (%) terms. A four-point-verbal-rating-scale was used to record the patients'' opinion of therapeutic-satisfaction (TS).

Results:

ASO was 75.3 ± 9.4% and TS indicated that most patients (58.5%) obtained “good” results. Of the remainder, 38.7% found the results “excellent”, and 2.8% found them “fair”.

Discussion and Conclusion:

The data suggested that the use of aesthetic-loci may be a useful tool for PS as an anatomical reference for surgical marking. However, further investigation is required to assess the efficacy of the OA by providing the patients more reliable balance and harmony in facial and body contours surgeries.