pediatrics

Updates on Anesthesia Provided by Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons

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Recently, it has come to my attention that the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) has released a new white paper titled “Office-Based Anesthesia Provided by the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon,” in 2013, located over at http://www.aaoms.org/docs/papers/advocacy_office_based_anesthesia.pdf. This data contains some important data from the OMS National Insurance Company (OMSNIC) which to my knowledge had been previously closed. This data is Anesthesia Morbidity and Mortality Data from 2000 to 2010  for a total of 29,975,459 in-office anesthetics (conscious sedation, deep sedation and general anesthesia) provided by oral and maxillofacial surgeons in their offices. It was found from this data that the ratio of office fatalities/brain damage per anesthetics administered is 1 to 365,534.  I had long wondered what this data showed as I have previously looked at numerous studies attempting to determine how many deaths occur when anesthesia … Read more

Adverse Sedation Events and Impact on Provider Specialty in Pediatrics

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Recently an article was published in Pediatrics titled Impact of Provider Specialty on Pediatric Procedural Sedation Complication Rates with authors Kevin G. Couloures, Michael Beach, Joseph P. Cravero, Kimberly K. Monroe and James H. Hertzog.   (2011, 127, pages e1154-e1160).  The conclusion presented in the abstract of the article is “In our sedation services consortium, pediatric procedural sedation performed outside the operating room is unlikely to yield serious adverse outcomes. Within this framework, no differences were evident in either the adjusted or unadjusted rates of major complications among different pediatric specialists.” The authors mentioned in this article another study conducted in Pediatrics which found over a 27 year period there were 60 cases identified in which death or severe neurological injury occurred of children 0.08 years to 20 years old. However, this study presented different conclusions in the abstract of the … Read more