Tag laryngospasm

EXTUBATION IS RISKY BUSINESS. WHY THE CONCLUSION OF GENERAL ANESTHESIA CAN BE A CRITICAL EVENT

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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preparing to remove an endotracheal tube from a patient

Every general anesthetic has risk. In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “Sh*t happens.” The conclusion of most general anesthetics requires the removal of a breathing tube. The removal of this airway tube, an event called “extubation,” is a critical and sometimes dangerous event. Extubation is risky business.

The most invasive type of airway tube used in anesthesia is called an endotracheal tube, or ET tube. At the onset of general anesthesia anesthesiologists place an ET tube through the mouth, past the larynx (voice box), and into the trachea (windpipe). The ET tube is a conduit to safely transfer oxygen and anesthesia gases into and out of the lungs.

After a surgery is finished, anesthetic gases and intravenous anesthesia drugs are discontinued, and the patient wakes up within 5 to 15 minutes. If the patient has an ET tube, it is usually removed. Anesthesiologists are vigilant during extubation. In contrast, other operating room professionals are usually relaxed and winding down at this time, because the surgical procedure is finished. Extubation is not a time to relax. The incidence of respiratory complications (e.g. low oxygen saturations or airway obstruction) occurred at a significantly higher rate following extubation than during induction of anesthesia (P < 0.01).

The Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the Management of Tracheal Extubation state that “tracheal extubation is a high-risk phase of anesthesia. The majority of problems that occur during extubation and emergence are of a minor nature, but a small and significant number may result in injury or death.”

Let’s examine five actual post-extubation scenarios that caused death, complications, or a near-miss: 

  1. During my first month of anesthesia training at a county hospital in San Jose, California, I chose to try to wake up a healthy patient without the presence of my faculty member. When I removed the endotracheal tube, the patient was unable to breathe and his oxygen level dropped acutely. I didn’t know what to do, and in a panic I paged my faculty member. He entered the operating room, elbowed me aside, assessed the diagnosis of laryngospasm, applied an anesthesia mask over the patient’s face, and began a chin-lift maneuver while forcing positive pressure oxygen into the patient via the mask. Within ten seconds the patient coughed, began breathing, and the oxygen level rose to safe levels. I was aghast with the acute deterioration I had neither predicted nor known how to remedy. The faculty member looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t take out the endotracheal tube until the patient opens his eyes.” I took that endotracheal tube out too early because I was inexperienced—still years away from finishing my anesthesia training. Laryngospasm occurs when the vocal cords clamp together following removal of the ET tube. This is usually caused by saliva or blood on the vocal cords during an intermediate phase of anesthesia. Laryngospasm is a vocal cord reflex which closes the cords to protect the trachea from aspirating fluid into the lungs. When the vocal cords remain closed, no oxygen can pass and an individual can die. The Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the Management of Tracheal Extubation (see below), published in 2012, recommend to “wait until awake, eye opening/obeying commands,” just as my faculty member advised me in 1986.
Difficult Airway Society Guidelines “low risk” algorithm
NOTE: “Wait until awake (eye opening/obeying commands)”
  • A 40-year-old male presented for outpatient surgery on his nose. His past medical history was positive for obesity (220 pounds, 5 feet 6 inches tall) and hypertension. Anesthesia was induced with propofol, fentanyl, and rocuronium, and an ET tube was easily placed. The surgery concluded 2 hours later and the anesthetics were discontinued. The patient began to cough. The anesthesiologist decided to extubate the trachea at that time. After extubation the patient continued to make respiratory efforts, but no airflow was noted. The blood oxygen saturation dropped to a dangerous level of 78%. The anesthesiologist was unable to reintubate the trachea due to poor visibility. The oxygen saturation dropped to 50%. Seven minutes later, the anesthesiologist was finally able to replace the ET tube. Copious secretions were suctioned out of the tube, ventilation remained difficult, and the oxygen saturation level remained in the 50% range. The patient’s ECG deteriorated into a cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated, and 20 minutes later his oxygen saturation finally rose to 94%. A chest x-ray showed pulmonary edema, meaning that the lungs were full of fluid. The diagnosis was laryngospasm leading to negative pressure pulmonary edema. When a patient powerfully attempts to inhale against the obstructed vocal cords of laryngospasm, the negative pressure of each inhale moves fluid from blood vessels into the airway spaces of the lungs, a phenomenon is called negative pressure pulmonary edema. This patient was eventually declared brain dead due to prolonged his prolonged low oxygen levels.
Chest X-ray showing increased lung water in negative pressure pulmonary edema
  • A 40-year-old male presented for a routine elective upper GI endoscopy procedure. He was morbidly obese, with a weight of 380 pounds and a height of 5 feet 4 inches. The anesthesiologist induced anesthesia with propofol and paralyzed the patient with rocuronium in order to place the ET tube prior to the procedure. The procedure lasted only 15 minutes. The paralysis was reversed by the drug combination of neostigmine 5 mg and Robinul 1 mg, and patient was extubated awake. In the first minute it became clear that the patient was still partially paralyzed and unable to ventilate himself. The blood oxygen level dropped acutely to life-threatening levels. The anesthesiologist then performed an emergency reintubation to replace the ET tube to again ventilate oxygen into the patient’s lungs to save his life. (Note- this case occurred in 2015, prior to the availability of sugammadex, a new intravenous drug which rapidly and reliably reverses rocuronium paralysis in a minute or less.) 
  • An 80-year-old female presented for elective right elbow surgery. She was obese (220 pounds, 5 feet tall), had a past history of congestive heart failure, and had her aortic valve replaced two years earlier. She had a history of shortness of breath climbing one flight of stairs. The anesthesiologist induced anesthesia with propofol and rocuronium, and placed an ET tube. At the conclusion of surgery, the anesthetics were discontinued. While the ET tube remained in place, her blood pressure climbed to a high of 200/120, her heart rate climbed to 120 beats per minute, and white froth began to occlude the inside of the ET tube. This fluid was pouring out of her lungs due to acute congestive heart failure caused by marked hypertension. During extubation, 10 – 30 % increases in both heart rate and blood pressure can occur. Hypertension and increased heart rate must be monitored and treated during the extubation of patients with cardiac disease. The patient was ventilated with 100% oxygen, an arterial line was placed in the radial artery in her wrist to continually monitor her elevated blood pressure, and an emergency infusion of an ICU antihypertensive drug called nitroprusside was started. The nitroprusside decreased the blood pressure to 150/80, she was re-sedated with propofol, and she was transferred to an ICU with the ET tube still in place. A myocardial infarction was ruled out by blood tests. The ET tube was removed in the ICU the following morning. She walked out of the hospital two days later. 
  • A healthy 4-year-old female had a general anesthetic for elective surgery to reconstruct her middle ear. After a ninety-minute surgery, the anesthetics were discontinued. Five minutes later she opened her eyes. Just seconds prior to the planned extubation, the patient vomited 100 milliliters of brown solid and liquid material which overflowed from her mouth. The anesthesiologist inserted a suction catheter into her mouth to remove the vomitus. The lung examination with a stethoscope confirmed normal breath sounds. The patient’s vital signs remained normal and the ET tube was removed. The patient suffered no respiratory distress, and the lungs were free from of the stomach contents. The cuffed ET tube prevented aspiration of the vomitus into her lungs. If her ET tube had been removed at any point prior to the vomiting, it’s likely the solid and liquid stomach contents would have descended into her lungs, clogged and obstructed her lower airways, and required insertion of a new ET tube and transfer to an ICU for treatment of aspiration of stomach contents into the lungs. 

My advice to anesthesia professionals regarding extubation is to:

  • Review the Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the Management of Tracheal Extubation. The guidelines advise awake extubation. My advice, in line with this publication, is: The ET tube is your friend. Don’t pull it out until you’re certain you don’t need it any more. Prior to extubation, many patients will struggle and move prior to the time they open their eyes or can obey commands. An onlooking surgeon will at times say, “can you take the tube out now? The patient is going to rip their sutures out or have bleeding from the surgical site.” At times anesthesiologists will comply and remove the ET tube earlier at this request. Most of the time there will be no serious complication, but there will at times be complications of airway obstruction, laryngospasm, or low oxygen levels. If a bad outcome occurs, the anesthesiologist will own the complication. No one will blame the surgeon.
  • Pass the American Board of Anesthesiologists oral board examination, and become board-certified in anesthesiology. The time spent studying for the oral boards will make you a safer and smarter anesthesiologist who is better prepared to handle emergency situations. A study in Anesthesiology showed rates for death and failure to rescue from crises were greater when anesthesia care was delivered by non-board certified midcareer anesthesiologists. In the Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, we administer mock oral board examinations to the residents and fellows twice a year. Managing a sudden hypoxic episode is a common question during the oral exam. If you can think well in a room in front of two examiners, you are more likely to think well in a true emergency when your patient’s life is at stake.
  • If you have access to anesthesia simulator sessions, enroll yourself. Like the flight simulator training that commercial pilots are required to complete, anesthesia simulators hone the emergency skills of individual anesthesiologists.

What if you’re a patient and you’re contemplating surgery? How can you optimize your chances to avoid an anesthetic complication? I offer these suggestions:

  • Choose to have your surgery at a facility that is staffed with American Board of Anesthesiology board-certified physician anesthesiologists.
  • Ask a knowledgeable medical professional to recommend a specific anesthesiologist at your facility, and request that specific anesthesiologist for your care.
  • Inquire about who would manage your crisis if you have one during or after your surgery. Will your anesthesia professional be a physician anesthesiologist, a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA), or an anesthesia care team made up of both? If an anesthesia care team is attending to you, how many rooms is each physician anesthesiologist supervising? How far away or how many minutes away will your physician anesthesiologist be while you are asleep?
  • In the future, quality of care data will be available on facilities and physicians, including anesthesiologists. These metrics will allow patients to compare facilities and physicians. Do your homework with whatever data is publicized. Research the facility you are about to be anesthetized in.
  • You are a higher risk patient if you have: significant obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, heart problems, breathing problems, age > 65, if you’re having regular dialysis, emergency surgery, abdominal surgery, chest surgery, major vascular surgery, cardiac surgery, brain surgery, regular dialysis, a total joint replacement, or a surgery involving a high blood loss. Be aware you’re at a higher risk, and ask more questions of your surgeon and your anesthesia provider. 

Neither anesthesia providers nor patients want to be victims of an anesthetic emergency that leads to a bad outcome.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?



LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM BY CLICKING ON THE PICTURE BELOW:

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HOW DO YOU START A PEDIATRIC ANESTHETIC WITHOUT A SECOND ANESTHESIOLOGIST?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 1 Comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Clinical Case: In your first week in community practice post-residency and fellowship, you’re scheduled to anesthetize a 4-year-old for a tonsillectomy. You’ll start the anesthetic without an attending or a second anesthesiologist. How do you start a pediatric anesthetic alone?

 

Discussion: During residency it’s standard to initiate pediatric cases with an attending at your right hand to mentor and assist you through the induction of anesthesia. The second pair of hands is critical—one of you manages the airway for the inhalation induction, and the second anesthesiologist starts the IV. In community practice you’ll have to manage all this yourself.

A significant percentage of pediatric anesthetics are performed in regional hospitals and surgery centers rather than in pediatric tertiary hospitals. How does the community practice of pediatric anesthesia differ from pediatric anesthesia in residency?

In community practice you’ll likely telephone the parents the night prior to surgery to discuss the anesthetic. It’s uncommon for a 4-year-old and his family to visit any pre-anesthesia clinic. You’ll take a history over the phone from the parents, explain the basics of anesthetic care, and answer any questions they have.

On the morning of surgery you’ll meet the parents and the child. It’s likely you’ll prescribe an oral midazolam premedication. You’ll set up your operating room with appropriate sized pediatric equipment, heeding the M-A-I-D-S mnemonic for Machine and Monitors-Airway-IV-Drugs-Suction.

What about a request from the mother and/or father to accompany the child into the operating room? This author advises against bringing parents into the O.R. Instead premedicate the child to minimize the emotional trauma of separation from the parent(s), and explain that the duration of time from when they hand you their child to when the gas mask is applied will only be a few minutes.

It’s common to induce anesthesia with the child in a sitting position. The one most important monitor you can place prior to induction is the pulse oximeter. Once unconsciousness is attained, the child is laid supine and a pretracheal stethoscope, the ECG leads, and the blood pressure cuff are applied. If you’re not using a pretracheal stethoscope during mask inductions, let me recommend it to you. No other monitor gives you immediate information on the patency of the airway like the stethoscope does. You can remedy partial or total airway obstruction more promptly than if you wait for oxygen desaturation or end-tidal CO2 changes.

Most children have an easy airway and require no more than occasional positive airway pressure via the mask to keep spontaneous ventilation open. Young children scheduled for tonsillectomy sometimes carry the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) based on a clinical history of snoring, noisy breathing, or daytime somnolence. It’s uncommon for these patients to have a formal sleep study to document OSA. OSA children may have more challenging airways and have an increased incidence of partial airway obstruction during inhalation induction.

In residency I was taught to supplement the potent volatile anesthetic (halothane in decades past) with 50-70% nitrous oxide. Because the blood:gas partition coefficient of sevoflurane is 0.65, comparable to nitrous oxide’s 0.45, anesthetic induction with sevoflurane alone is nearly as fast as sevoflurane-nitrous oxide. The addition of nitrous oxide to the induction mix is unnecessary, and using an FIO2 of 1.0 affords an extra cushion of oxygen reservoir if the airway is difficult or if the airway is lost.

How will you start the IV after induction? There are several options: 1) You can ask the surgeon or a nurse to start the IV. In my experience, neither surgeons nor O.R. nurses are as skilled in starting pediatric IV’s as an anesthesiologist is, so I don’t recommend this plan; 2) You can ask the surgeon or the O.R. nurse to hold the mask and manage the airway while you start the IV. This option is safe if the airway is easy and you trust the airway skills of the other individual; 3) You can stand at your normal anesthesia position, hold the mask over the patient’s airway with your left hand, and ask the nurse to bend the patient’s left arm back toward you. The nurse tourniquets the patient’s arm at the wrist, and with your right hand you perform a one-handed IV start in the back of the patient’s left hand; 4) The option I feel most comfortable with is to fit mask straps behind the patient’s head, and secure the mask in place with the four straps after the patient is fully anesthetized (when their eyes have returned to a conjugate gaze). While the straps hold the mask in place, you listen to the patient’s breathing via the pretracheal stethoscope to assure yourself that the airway is patent. Then move to the left-hand side of the table and start the IV in the child’s left arm. The typical length of time away from the airway should be less than one minute. If the child has no obvious veins, fit the automated blood pressure cuff (in stat mode) on top of the tourniquet on the upper arm. The BP cuff is a superior tourniquet and the inflated cuff makes it easier to find a suitable vein.

Once the IV is in place, proceed with intubating the patient. In community practice the surgical duration of tonsillectomies can be very short, so the choice of muscle relaxant is important. Succinylcholine carries a black box warning for non-emergent use in children, and should not be used for elective intubation. You can: 1) administer rocuronium and later reverse the paralysis with neostigmine plus atropine; 2) administer a dose of propofol, e.g. 2 mg/kg, which blunts airway reflexes enough to allow excellent intubating conditions in most patients; or 3) you can do perform two laryngoscopies, the first to inject 1 ml of 4% lidocaine from a laryngotracheal anesthesia (LTA) kit, and another 30 seconds later to place the endotracheal tube in the now-anesthetized trachea. Some anesthesiologist/surgeon teams prefer an LMA rather than an endotracheal tube. LMA use for tonsillectomy is not routine in our practice, but one advantage is that an LMA does not require paralysis for insertion.

What if you’re working alone and your patient develops acute oxygen desaturation with airway obstruction and/or laryngospasm during inhalation induction before any IV has been placed? What do you do?

If you anesthetize enough children you will have this experience, and it can be frightening. The immediate management is to inject succinylcholine 4 mg/kg plus atropine 0.02 mg/kg intramuscularly, usually into the deltoid. Then you do your best to improve mask ventilation using an oral airway or LMA if necessary. The oxygen saturation may dip below 90% for a short period of time while you wait for the onset of the intramuscular paralysis. Once muscle relaxation is achieved, ventilation should be successful and the oxygen saturation will climb to a safe level. The trachea can then be intubated, and an IV can be started following the intubation.

If such a desaturation occurs, should you cancel the case? It depends. I’d recommend cancelling the case if: 1) the duration of the oxygen saturation was so prolonged that you are worried about hypoxic brain damage; or 2) gastric contents are present in the airway and you are concerned with possible pulmonary aspiration.

Working pediatric cases alone is rewarding as well as stressful. Nothing in my practice brings me as much joy as walking into the waiting room following a pediatric case to inform parents their child is awake and safe. The parents are relieved, and watching the mother-child reunion minutes later in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit is a heart-warming experience.

Not all anesthesiologists will choose to do pediatric cases during their post-residency career. If you will be anesthetizing children alone in community practice, it’s a good idea toward the end of your anesthesia residency or fellowship to ask your pediatric anesthesia attending keep their hands off during induction, so you can hone your skills managing both the airway and IV. That way you’ll be ready and capable of inducing a child alone after you leave training.

 

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:

How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?

Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?

Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?

How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?

Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?

What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

 

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:

10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia

Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?

12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training

Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?

Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams

What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

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Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

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DO YOU NEED AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST FOR ENDOSCOPY OF YOUR ESOPHAGUS, STOMACH, AND UPPER GASTROENTEROLOGIC TRACT?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 9 Comments
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Do you need an anesthesiologist for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy? In the aftermath of Joan Rivers’ tragic death following an upper endoscopy procedure at a New York outpatient surgery center, every news bureau is discussing this topic. Because I have no inside information on Joan Rivers’ medical care during her procedure, I will not judge her physicians, rather I will attempt to answer the specific question:

Do you need an anesthesiologist for an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy?

The answer to the question is:  it depends.  It depends on 1) your health, 2) the conscious sedation skills of your gastroenterologist, and 3) the facility you have your endoscopy at.

1)  YOUR HEALTH. The majority of endoscopies in the United States are performed under conscious sedation.  Conscious sedation is administered by a registered nurse, under specific orders from the gastroenterologist.  The typical drugs are Versed (midazolam) and fentanyl.  Versed is a benzodiazepine, or Valium-like medication, that is superb in reducing anxiety, sleepiness, and producing amnesia.  Fentanyl is a narcotic pain reliever, similar to a short-acting morphine.  The combination of these two types of medications renders a patient sleepy but awake.  Most patients can minimal or no recollection of the endoscopy procedure when under the influence of these two drugs.  I can speak from personal experience, as I had an endoscopy myself, with conscious sedation with Versed and fentanyl, and I remembered nothing of the procedure.

If you are a reasonably healthy adult, you should be fine having the procedure under conscious sedation.  Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, obesity, mild to moderate sleep apnea, advanced age, or stable cardiac disease are have conscious sedation for colonoscopies in America every day, without significant complications.

Certain patients are not good candidates for conscious sedation, and require an anesthesiologist for sedation or general anesthesia.  Included in this category are a) patients on large doses of chronic narcotics for chronic pain, who are tolerant to the fentanyl and are therefore difficult to sedate, b) certain patients with morbid obesity, c) certain patients with severe sleep apnea, and d) certain patients with severe heart or breathing problems.

2)  THE CONSCIOUS SEDATION SKILLS OF YOUR GASTROENTEROLOGIST.  Most gastroenterologists are comfortable directing registered nurses in the administration of conscious sedation drugs.  Some, however, are not.  These gastroenterologists will disclose this to their patients, and recommend that an anesthesiologist administer general anesthesia for the procedure.

3) THE FACILITY YOU HAVE YOUR ENDOSCOPY AT.  Most endoscopy facilities have nurses and gastroenterologists comfortable with conscious sedation.  Some do not.  The facility you are referred to may have a consistent policy of having an anesthesiologist administer general anesthesia with propofol for all endoscopies.  If this is true, they should disclose this to you, the patient, before you arrive for the procedure.  A facility which always utilizes general anesthesia means that you, the patient, will incur one extra physician bill for your procedure, from an anesthesiologist.

I refer you to an article from the New York Times, which summarizes the anesthesiologist-propofol-for-endoscopy phenomenon in the New York region in 2012:

One last point: If the drugs Versed and fentanyl are used, there exist specific and effective antidotes for each drug if the patient becomes oversedated. The antagonist for Versed is Romazicon (flumazenil), and the antagonist for fentanyl is Narcan (naloxone). If these drugs are injected promptly into the IV of an oversedated patient, the patient will wake up in seconds, before any oxygen deprivation affects the brain or heart.

Propofol, however, has no specific antagonist. Propofol only wears off as it is redistributed out of the blood stream into other tissues, and its blood level declines. A propofol overdose can cause obstruction of breathing, and/or depression of breathing, such that the blood oxygen level is insufficient for the brain and heart. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that a Black Box warning be included in the packaging of every box of propofol. That warning states that propofol “should be administered only by persons trained in the administration of general anesthesia and not involved in the conduct of the surgical/diagnostic procedure.”

Anesthesiologists are experts at using propofol. I administer propofol to 99% of my patients who are undergoing general anesthesia for a surgical procedure. Anesthesiologists are experts at managing airways and breathing. Individuals who are not trained to administer general anesthesia should never administer propofol to a patient, in a hospital or in an outpatient surgery center.

I serve as the medical director of an outpatient surgery center in Palo Alto, California. We perform a variety of orthopedic, head and neck, plastic, ophthalmic, and general surgery procedures safely each year. In addition, our gastroenterologists perform thousands of endoscopies each year. I review the charts of the endoscopy patients as well as the surgical patients prior to the procedures, and in our center, approximately 99% of endoscopies can be safely performed under Versed and fentanyl conscious sedation, without the need for an anesthesiologist attending to the patient.

If you have an endoscopy, ask questions. Will you receive conscious sedation with drugs like Versed and fentanyl, or will an anesthesiology professional administer propofol? You deserve to know.

 

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:

How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?

Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?

Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?

How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?

Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?

What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

 

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:

10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia

Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?

12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training

Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?

Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams

What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

SUCCINYLCHOLINE: VITAL DRUG OR OBSOLETE DINOSAUR?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 6 Comments
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Succinylcholine: vital drug or dinosaur? Succinylcholine (sux) has the wonderful advantage of rendering a patient paralyzed in less than a minute, and the discouraging disadvantage of a long list of side effects that make the drug problematic.

succinylcholine_chloride_10_med-21

A vial of succinylcholine

I would never begin an anesthetic without succinylcholine being immediately available. No other muscle relaxant supplies as rapid an onset of action and as short a duration of action. An intravenous dose of 1 mg/kg of succinylcholine brings complete paralysis of the neuromuscular junction at 60 seconds, and recovery to 90% of muscle strength in 9 – 13 minutes. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 29, Pharmacology of Muscle Relaxants and Their Antagonists). If a patient has an acute airway disaster on induction such as laryngospasm or pulmonary aspiration, no drug enables emergency endotracheal intubation as quickly as succinylcholine. That said, I never use succinylcholine unless I have to. The drug has too many side effects and rocuronium is often a better choice. For an elective anesthetic on a patient who has fasted and has an empty stomach, one almost never needs to use succinylcholine. If you do use sux, you are exposing your patient to the following side effects:

1. Myalgias. Your patient complains to you the following day, “Doc, I feel like I was run over by a truck.” Because the majority of anesthetics are currently done on outpatients, and because you do not personally interview these patients the following day, you won’t be aware of the degree of muscle pain you’ve induced by using the depolarizing relaxant succinylcholine. Published data quantitates the incidence of post-succinylcholine myalgia as varying from 0.2 % to 89% (Brodsky JB, Anesthesiology 1979; 51:259-61), but my clinical impression is that the number is closer to 89% than it is to 0.2%. Myalgias aren’t life-threatening, but if you ever converse with your patient one day after succinylcholine and they complain of severe muscle aches, you’ll wish you’d chosen another muscle relaxant if possible.
2. Risk of cardiac arrest in children. Succinylcholine carries a black box warning for use in children. Rare hyperkalemia and ventricular arrhythmias followed by cardiac arrest may occur in apparently healthy children who have an occult muscular dystrophy. The black box warning on succinylcholine recommends to “reserve use in children for emergency intubation or need to immediately secure the airway.”
3. Hyperkalemia, with an average increase of 0.5 mEq in potassium concentration after intravenous succinylcholine injection.
4. Cardiac arrest in patients with a history of severe trauma, neurologic disease or burns. There’s a risk of cardiac arrest with succinylcholine use in patients with severe burns, major trauma, stroke, prolonged immobility, multiple sclerosis, or Guillian-Barré syndrome, due to an up-regulation of acetylcholine. The increase in serum potassium normally seen with succinylcholine can be greatly increased in these populations, leading to ventricular arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. There is typically no risk using succinylcholine in the first 24 hours after the acute injury.
5. Cardiac arrhythmias. Both tachy and bradycardias can be seen following the injection of succinylcholine.
6. Increase in intraocular pressure, a hazard when the eye is open or traumatized.
7. Increase in intragastric pressure, a hazard if gastric motility is abnormal or the stomach is full.
8. Increase in intracranial pressure, a hazard with head injuries or intracerebral bleeds or tumors.
9. Malignant Hyperthermia (MH) risk. The incidence of MH is low. A Danish study reported one case per 4500 anesthetics when triggering agents are in use (Ording H, Dan Med Bull, 43:111-125), but succinylcholine is the only injectable drug which is a trigger for MH, and this is a disincentive to use the drug routinely.
10. Prolonged phase II blockade. Patients who have genetically abnormal plasma butyrylcholinesterase activity have the risk of a prolonged phase II succinylcholine block lasting up to six hours instead of the expected 9 – 13 minutes. If you’ve ever had to stay in the operating room or post-anesthesia recovery room for hours with a ventilated patient after their surgery ended because your patient incurred prolonged blockade from succinylcholine, you won’t forget it, and you’ll hope it never happens again.

What does a practicing anesthesiologist use instead of succinylcholine? Rocuronium.

A 0.6 mg/kg intubating dose of the non-depolarizing relaxant rocuronium has an onset time to maximum block of 1.7 minutes and a duration of 36 minutes. The onset time can be shortened by increasing the dose to a 1.2 mg/kg, a dose which has an onset time to maximum block of 0.9 minutes and a duration of 73 minutes. These durations can be shortened by reversing the rocuronium blockade as soon as one twitch is measured with a neuromuscular blockade monitor. Thus by using a larger dose of rocuronium, practitioners can have an onset of acceptable intubation conditions at 0.9 X 60 seconds = 54 seconds, compared to the 30 seconds noted with succinylcholine, without any of the 10 above-listed succinylcholine side effects. The duration of rocuronium when reversed by neostigmine/glycopyrrolate can be as short as 20 – 25 minutes, a time short enough to accommodate most brief surgical procedures.

Now that sugammadex is commercially available, we can reverse rocuronium blockade in seconds, making rocuronium shorter in duration than succinylcholine.

Here is a list of surgical cases once thought to be indications for using succinylcholine, which I would argue are now better served by using a dose of rocuronium followed by early reversal with sugammadex:

1) Brief procedures requiring intubation, such as bronchoscopy or tonsillectomy.
2) Procedures which require intubation plus intraoperative nerve monitoring, such as middle ear surgery.
3) Procedures requiring intubation of obese and morbidly obese patients who appear to have no risk factors for mask ventilation.
4) Procedures requiring full stomach precautions and cricoid pressure, in which the patient’s oxygenation status can tolerate 54 seconds of apnea prior to intubation. This includes emergency surgery and trauma patients. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 72, Anesthesia for Trauma) discusses the induction of anesthesia and endotracheal intubation for emergency patients who are not NPO and may have full stomachs. Either succinylcholine or rocuronium can be used, with succinylcholine having the advantage of a quicker onset and the 1.2 mg/kg of rocuronium having the advantage of lacking the 10 side effects listed above. The fact that succinylcholine takes 9 – 13 minutes to wear off makes it riskier than rocuronium, which can be reversed in seconds by sugammadex. Waiting for 9 minutes for a return to spontaneous respirations after succinycholine would be associated with severe hypoxia.

On the other hand, succinylcholine is the sole recommended muscle relaxant for:

1) Cesarean sections. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 69, Anesthesia for Obstetrics) still recommends thiopental and succinylcholine for Cesarean sections that require general anesthesia, and I would be loath to disagree with our specialty’s Bible.
2) Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 79, Anesthesia at Remote Locations) recommends partial muscle relaxation during ECT, and recommends small doses of succinylcholine (0.5 mg/kg) to reduce the peripheral manifestations of the seizure and to prevent musculoskeletal trauma to the patient.
3) Urgent intubation or re-intubation in a patient when every second counts, e.g. a patient who is already hypoxic. A subset of this indication is the patient who is being mask-induced and becomes hypoxic and requires intramuscular succinylcholine injection.
4) Laryngospasm either during mask induction or post-extubation, in which the patient requires urgent paralysis to relax the vocal cords.

In conclusion, most indications for muscle relaxation are better handled by using the non-depolarizing drug rocuronium rather than succinylcholine. However, because of the four recommended uses for succinylcholine listed in the previous paragraph, none of us would ever practice anesthesia without a vial of succinylcholine in our drawer for immediate availability.

I try very, very hard to minimize my use of succinylcholine, and so should you. But to answer our original question… succinylcholine is still a vital drug and not a dinosaur at all.

 

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:

How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?

Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?

Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?

How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?

Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?

What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

 

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:

10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia

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Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?

Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams

What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

 

 

 

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

NEGATIVE PRESSURE PULMONARY EDEMA IN A FREESTANDING SURGERY CENTER

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Clinical Case:   You are working at a freestanding surgery center.  A healthy 58-year- old man has a mask anesthetic for a shoulder manipulation.  During the procedure he coughs and bucks, and his oxygen saturation drops to 80%.  With mask continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) the airway improves, and the oxygen saturation returns to 100%.  In the recovery room he looks well and feels great, but his oxygen saturation on room air is 90%. What do you do?

Discussion:    One key difference between academic and private practice is the number of  operating rooms in freestanding facilities, located miles from the nearest hospital.  There are marketplace incentives that induce surgeons to take their surgeries to facilities that they own themselves, or to remodel part of their office space into approved operating facilities.  This makes for additional challenges for perioperative physicians.

In this case, the preoperative oxygen saturation was 99% on room air.  The anesthetic included 200 mg of propofol,   1-2% sevoflurane, and  50% nitrous oxide.  The surgeon injected 20 cc of .5% bupivicaine into the shoulder joint.   In the recovery room, the initial oxygen saturation was 95% on 4 liters/minute of nasal oxygen.  As the patient became more awake, he received a total of 8 mg of morphine I.V. over 30 minutes for shoulder pain.  An hour later, at 1600 hours, you are called to see him because his oxygen saturation on room air does not meet discharge criteria.  You find the patient in the recovery room looking well, with no complaints of dyspnea or chest pain.  His heart rate is 95, blood pressure is 120/80, respiratory rate is 20, temperature is normal, and his oxygen saturation is 88-92%  on room air.  His physical exam is negative except for bilateral inspiratory rales at the lung bases.

What is the diagnosis?  You did not see any sign of aspiration in the operating room, although that is a possibility.  When the coughing and bucking occurred, he had an episode of laryngospasm, which you treated with mask CPAP.   It is possible  he had a mild case of negative pressure pulmonary edema.  Atelectasis is also a possibility.   You order incentive spirometry, but it does not increase his oxygen saturation.  An ECG is normal.  You continue to treat the patient with 4 liters/minute nasal oxygen while you make a plan.

The patient and his wife are pleading with you because they want to go home.   They promise to telephone you if he gets short of breath during the night.  However, there is  a new abnormal vital sign and a new finding of rales.  You are not able to do a chest radiograph at the surgery center.  Your facility is about to close for the night.  The surgeon wonders if the patient’s wife  can drive the patient to the emergency room in the family car.

You are concerned that the standard of care for a reasonably trained anesthesiologist would not include sending this patient home.  Nor would it include letting a patient drive to the hospital in the family car, without oxygen.  You telephone the patient’s family physician, and he agrees to manage the patient after transfer to the hospital.  You discuss that the differential diagnosis includes aspiration versus negative pressure pulmonary edema.  He will order a chest radiograph, and consider a dose of furosemide.  You spend an extended period of time explaining to the family the necessity of transfer, and then call for an ambulance to pick up the patient.  Your assessment is that he is stable enough that you do not need to accompany him to the hospital.

In follow up the next day, you find that the X-ray showed minimal  infiltrates at the lung bases.  The patient improved without diuretic therapy, and was discharged home at noon.  His  oxygen saturation was 97% room air, and he was taking Vicodin for shoulder pain.

At Stanford Hospital, the Ambulatory Surgery Center is in the middle of the hospital, and it is not difficult to get a chest X-ray,  a blood gas, admit a patient to the hospital, or even  transfer a patient to the ICU.  In freestanding centers, these things can be a big production.   Physicians performing or supervising a scheduled medical procedure outside of a hospital, resulting in the patient’s transfer to a hospital for medical treatment exceeding 24 hours, are required to  fill out a Patient Transfer Reporting Form and send it to the Medical Board of California within 15 days.   The Medical Board monitors freestanding facilities for patterns of frequent  transfers and complications.

This  patient did well and was discharged in less than 24 hours.  Because it was possible for worsening hypoxia or pneumonitis to develop in the first 24 hours after surgery,  you were conservative and wise to transfer the patient.  The trend toward freestanding facilities is not going away.  This case  illustrates only some of the issues of doing quality medical care in these settings.

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

CAN YOU LEAVE YOUR ANESTHETIZED PATIENT IN AN EMERGENCY?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Clinical Case of the Month:  You are in an operating room in a freestanding plastic surgery center giving general anesthesia to Patient A, and you are called by the PACU nurse because Patient B in the PACU is having stridor.  The PACU Patient B is a healthy 39-year-old female, one hour status-post liposuction, and her anesthesiologist has signed out to you.  Patient B is now cyanotic.  You are the only anesthesiologist for miles, and both Patient A and B need you.  What do you do?

Discussion:  You perch the circulating R.N. from your O.R. in front of the monitors, tell her to let you know if anything changes, and you leave the O.R. to attend to the patient in the PACU.  Is there any alternative?  Are you going to stand there with stable Patient A while Patient B dies of airway obstruction thirty feet away from you?

When you arrive in the PACU, you see a young woman sitting up in bed making loud crowing sounds with every inspiration.  Her oxygen saturation is 89% on 4 liters of nasal oxygen, and her heart rate is 110.  Her husband is standing at the bedside, and his eyes are bugging out of his head watching his wife gasp for air.  The PACU nurse is standing on the other side of the patient, and her eyes are bugging out almost as far as the husband’s.

You ask the nurse to open an Ambu bag and connect it to the oxygen source.  You ask the husband to leave the room while you evaluate and treat his wife.  A second nurse escorts him out.  You listen to the patient’s lungs, and her breath sounds are normal except for upper airway stridor.  The exam of her mouth and neck is normal.  You take additional history, and learn that she had a three hour intubation for a prone liposuction, and was extubated without complication.  She received 20 mg of meperidine 45 minutes earlier, and no other medication was given in PACU.  The stidor started two minutes earlier, when her oxygen saturation decreased from 100% to the high 80’s.

Your diagnosis is laryngospasm of unclear etiology.  You apply an anesthesia mask over her face, deliver 100% oxygen via the Ambu bag, and attempt to apply continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to break her laryngospasm.  You ask her to cough hard to clear secretions that may be lodged on her vocal cords.  Within a minute the stridor passes, and her oxygen saturation returns to 100%.  Her other vital signs are normal, and her skin is free of urticaria.  You review her anesthesia record, and it is unremarkable.  The patient feels significantly better, and you return to the OR to check on your patient who is still under general anesthesia.  The OR circulating nurse reassures you that Patient A is fine, and nothing changed during your absence.

Two minutes later, the PACU nurse calls in a panic again, because Patient B is having stridor again.  You run to the PACU, and repeat the assessment and therapeutic moves you made in the paragraphs above.  Your diagnosis is post-intubation laryngospasm.  You can not rule out post-intubation vocal cord paralysis.  You treat with 8 mg of IV dexamethasone.  There is no vaporized racemic epinephrine in the facility.  The patient is moving air well, but intermittently crowing with stridor.  You call 911 for an ambulance, and call the ER attending at the nearest hospital to tell him you are coming over.  You place a third call to the Respiratory Therapy service at the hospital, and tell them to meet you at the ER with a racemic epinephrine treatment for the patient.

Patient A’s surgery  ends in the next 10 minutes, as the ambulance crew arrives and prepares Patient B for transport.  You extubate Patient A and deliver her in stable condition to the PACU just in time to join the Emergency Medical Techs as they load Patient B into the ambulance.  You load your pockets with vials of propofol and succinylcholine, a laryngoscope, and two syringes, and follow her into the ambulance.  The siren blares, and the ambulance drives Code 3 to the ER.  The patient’s intermittent stidor continues, with oxygen saturation in the low 90’s on a 100% non-rebreather mask.

In the first twenty minutes in the ER, the Respiratory Therapist arrives and gives a nebulized racemic epinephrine treatment to Patient B.  Within the next twenty minutes her symptoms resolve.  Her husband arrives, and he looks a lot happier than the first time you saw him, too.

You make a phone call.  Minutes later, one of the nurses from the freestanding plastic surgery center drives up in their car to give you a ride back to where your automobile is parked back at the surgery center.

Sound impossible?  Guess again.  This entire scenario occurred three months ago, a mile or two from Stanford hospital.

The diagnosis of post-extubation stridor is more common in newborn infants after prolonged or multiple intubations, but it occurs in adults as well.  In one series of 112 extubations of adults in an ICU in France, the prevalence of post-extubation stridor was 12% (Jaber S, Intensive Care Med. 2003 Jan;29(1):69-74).  Occurrence after extubation post-surgery is less common.  When laryngospasm occurs in the OR immediately post-intubation, we are all taught to treat the patient with 100% oxygen and CPAP by face mask.  The laryngospasm usually clears as the patient awakens from anesthesia and mounts a strong cough to clear secretions from the larynx.

When stridor occurs in the PACU of a hospital, the established medical therapy is nebulized racemic epinephrine (Vaponefrin), .5 ml of a 2.25%solution q 3-4 hours given by Respiratory Therapy, and a dose of dexamethasone 4 – 8 mg IV (Miller, Anesthesia, 2005, pp 2817, 2538).   Nebulized epinephrine acts as both an alpha and beta adrenergic agonist, and has both vasoconstrictor and bronchodilator properties.

The lack of Respiratory Therapy in freestanding surgery centers is another of the issues that differentiates them from in-hospital ambulatory surgery centers.  The plastic surgery center that suffered through this episode has now purchased the equipment to deliver nebulized epinephrine post-op.  It may be years, or decades, before they get an opportunity to use it.  A more important lesson is that the perioperative care of surgical patients is multi-faceted, and no one is better prepared to diagnose or treat problems than an anesthesiologist.  If you practice anesthesia in freestanding surgery centers long enough, you too will experience a ride in an ambulance to the ER.  Hopefully your story will have a happy ending, as our Clinical Case of the Month did.

Our patient was discharged home from the ER after a stable four hour observation period, and she had no further problems at home.

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited