John Laffey has presented Critical Illness in Pregnancy at the Western Anaesthesia Symposium Today. Critical illness is an uncommon but potentially devastating complication of pregnancy. The majority of pregnancy-related critical care admissions occur postpartum. Antenatally, the pregnant patient is more likely to be admitted with diseases non-specific to pregnancy, such as pneumonia. Pregnancy-specific diseases resulting in … Continue reading
At today’s Western Anaesthesia Symposium, Joey Costello presented the latest data on post-dural puncture headache. This occurs with 1-3% of epidurals. Unfortunately, the majority of interventions that have been proposed are largely ineffective: caffeine, coca-cola, epidural saline, lying supine etc. There are promising data for co-syntropin and epidural morphine. The epidural blood patch remains the … Continue reading
