By Stephanie Brown HealthDay Reporter
The annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists was held from Oct. 13 to 17 in San Francisco and attracted approximately 15,000 participants from around the world, including anesthesiologists and other health care professionals. The conference featured presentations focusing on the latest advances in the relief of pain and total care of surgical patients prior to, during, and after surgery.
In one study, Thomas J. Caruso, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University in California, and colleagues found that the use of a virtual reality (VR) relaxation approach reduces anxiety among parents or caregivers whose child is undergoing surgery.
The authors used a VR approach with a meditative application to improve the experience for parents and caregivers while their children were under anesthesia. The study included 26 caregivers of children undergoing noninvasive or surgical procedures, including 54 percent who received the VR relaxation intervention and 46 percent who did not. The researchers found that the parents and caregivers who used VR relaxation after their child went to the operating room reported far fewer anxiety symptoms compared to those who did not use VR.
“Because VR is a widely available commercial product with reasonable costs, it may be considered by any treatment center seeking to offer anxiety-relieving options for parents of children under anesthesia,” Caruso said.
In another study, Timothy Heintz, of the University of California in San Diego, and colleagues found that an artificial intelligence (AI)-automated pain recognition system offers a promising advancement in pain management.
The authors evaluated a novel AI system that integrates computer vision and deep learning to interpret visuals, assessing pain through patients’ facial expressions. The computers were provided with 143,293 facial images from varied pain and nonpain episodes in an effort to the teach the machine to recognize patterns of pain. Preliminary results indicated that the AI system aligned closely with Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool (CPOT) assessments 88 percent of the time and with visual analog scale assessments 66 percent of the time. The research underscores the potential of AI to detect subtle cues of pain that might be overlooked by humans.
“By offering real-time, unbiased pain detection, it addresses the limitations of traditional pain assessment tools and improves clinical workflows and patient satisfaction through improved pain assessment, and decreases unrecognized pain episodes,” Heintz said. “The system’s ability to accurately predict pain using CPOT scale and its capability to detect even subtle cues of pain emphasizes its potential efficacy in enhancing patient care and improving health outcomes.”
Isaac Freedman, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues found that women are significantly more likely to develop depression following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) compared to their male counterparts.
The researchers performed a meta-analysis of nine studies involving almost 700,000 subjects and found that women are at an increased risk for psychiatric conditions, like depression, following head injuries.
“This has broad implications for public safety, such as traffic accidents and intimate partner violence, as well as in sports and the military,” Freedman said. “In older women, the most common cause of TBI is falls, and loneliness and depression are a leading cause of death. Therefore, identifying older women who are at risk for depression following head injuries from falls is an important public health target.”
ASA: Studies Present Solutions for Preventing Blood Loss After Cesarean
MONDAY, Oct. 30, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Calcium chloride can reduce quantitative blood loss after cesarean delivery and a uterine tone score can predict outcomes after cesarean delivery, according to two studies presented at ANESTHESIOLOGY 2023, the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, held from Oct. 13 to 17 in San Francisco.
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ASA: Deep Learning Model Can Improve Pain Assessment
FRIDAY, Oct. 27, 2023 (HealthDay News) — An automated pain recognition system is promising for detecting pain before, during, and after surgery, according to a study presented at ANESTHESIOLOGY 2023, the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, held from Oct. 13 to 17 in San Francisco.
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ASA: Women More Likely Than Men to Develop Depression After TBI
FRIDAY, Oct. 27, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Following traumatic brain injury, women are significantly more likely to develop depression than men, according to research presented at ANESTHESIOLOGY 2023, the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, held from Oct. 13 to 17 in San Francisco.
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