Study Links Anesthesia With Memory Loss in Middle Age /  by Muhammad Amir Ayub

“Using a 30-point diagnostic test, they found patients who had undergone surgery went down one point on average over the timespan (P=0.013). Out of 670 participants who had normal first tests, 77 declined to abnormal in the second test, 18% of surgery patients (21 of 114) and 10% of non-surgery patients (56 of 556). The researchers also found associations between reduced immediate memory and number of past surgeries (beta coefficient (SE) 0.08 (0.03), P= 0.012), as well as longer cumulative surgeries and working memory decline (beta coefficient (SE) -0.01 (0.00), P=0.028).”

The problem with this study is that there are changes with any surgery requiring general anesthesia or neuraxial anesthesia. It didn't appear as though they investigated any differences in outcome between the two modes.

Even when we think that neuraxial anesthesia would protect from cognitive decline, it actually isn't that clear that there is any difference.

HTAR's Anaesthesiology Department Down with Food Poisoning /  by Muhammad Amir Ayub

And so the incident eventually makes it into the news, with the event bringing a critical department (and its associated services) down to its knees. And as is usually known about the always full HTAR Hospital, it became a less ideal dogfooding experience, as those same medical staff can't all be admitted into the same hospital because of well, no available beds.

May you guys recover without further complications.

Addendum: Here’s the official press statement.

Residual Neuromuscular Blockade and Neuromuscular Monitoring /  by Muhammad Amir Ayub

Gonna have to re-reread the topic after making an unforgivable mistake of getting the PTC protocol partially wrong. Partially this is because such monitoring is not routine; I mainly monitor just to investigate delayed reversal when it happens.