Somehow it got to be February while I wasn’t looking. Or while I was working hard- take your pick. So, what is out there that’s caught my eye the last couple of weeks in spite of my clinical busy-ness?
I would argue that this summary of best practices in the prevention of postoperative delirium in older adults may be the single most important thing you can read this month (unless you’re a pediatric surgeon). For those of us who practice in ICUs, it’s doubly important.
This publication from a Dutch group adds more fodder to the relevance of frailty and sarcopenia in elective surgical outcomes, specifically in colorectal cancer surgery.
Is it possible that the strictly objective data collected for NSQIP performs as well as more complex and comprehensive risk assessments? Apparently so!
And for the critical care minded amongst us, two nice studies came out in JAMA last week in conjunction with SCCM. One examines the impact of chlorhexidine bathing in the ICU (hint: no change, more work), and the other looks at the impact of sedation protocols in the pediatric ICU on outcomes (another hint: no change). I’m always gratified to see negative studies published, if for no other reason than to convince us that maybe our existing practices are better than we think they are.
Keep an eye out for the February 3 issue of JAMA as well, timed to coincide with the Academic Surgical Congress meeting in Las Vegas this week. Spotlight: Surgery.
The jury is still out on a fiction recommendation- our book group read Philip Roth’s American Pastoral for our January book, and I’m only 200 pages in. I promise to report back, recognizing that Roth causes visceral reactions in some…