Today's Must-Have: Capnography Monitoring During Conscious Sedation
Clinical Education Podcast with Drs. Matt Kurrek and Richard Merchant
CHICAGO, Nov. 16, 2017 /CNW/ -- Today, the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety released a clinical education podcast with Matt Kurrek, MD, FRCPC (Professor, Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto) and Richard Merchant, MD, FRCPC (Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia, Department of Anesthesia, Pharmacology & Therapeutics).
Drs. Kurrek and Merchant coauthored an editorial, "Yesterday's Luxury, Today's Necessity" after the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society [CSA] published its revised 2012 guidelines to the practice of anesthesia. The CSA guidelines recommend capnography monitoring during conscious sedation. In the podcast, Drs. Kurrek and Merchant discuss why capnography monitoring may have been considered yesterday's luxury, but is now a necessity during conscious sedation.
CSA describes the term "conscious sedation" or "procedural sedation" as follows:
Sedation is "a state of reduced excitement or anxiety that is induced by the administration of a sedative agent". This condition is distinct from "general anesthesia", which is described as "a state of total unconsciousness resulting from anesthetic drug(s)" ...
Dr. Merchant emphasized that capnography monitoring is "required" monitoring for general anesthesia and sedation (4-6 on the Ramsay Sedation Scale shown below):
We have to recognize that there is reasonable good evidence to support capnographic monitoring, respiratory monitoring, for deep sedated patients … Not surprisingly, evidence for lightly sedated patient is not a very strong … risk is probably related to the depth of sedation and includes by and large respiratory complications … to minimize those, the practitioner would be well advised to see what depths of sedation the patient would actually be best served for, given the patient's co-mormidities, the resources, and the particular procedure.
To read a transcript of the interview, please click here.
The podcast may be viewed on the PPAHS YouTube channel by clicking here.
About Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety
Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is a non-profit 501(c)(3) whose mission is to promote safer clinical practices and standards for patients through collaboration among healthcare experts, professionals, scientific researchers, and others, to improve healthcare delivery. For more information, please go to www.ppahs.org.
SOURCE Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety
For further information: Michael Wong, Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety, [email protected], http://www.ppahs.org
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