Search
A research team dedicated to making anaesthesia and surgery safer and more comfortable for babies and children has been awarded an inaugural Byron Kakulas Medal by WA’s Perron Institute.
A leading paediatric anaesthetist and researcher focused on making anaesthesia safer and more comfortable for children has been named a 2022 Western Australian Young Tall Poppy.
Patient positioning interacts with a number of body systems and can impact clinically important perioperative outcomes. In this educational review, we present the available evidence on the impact that patient positioning can have in the pediatric perioperative setting. A literature search was conducted using search terms that focused on pediatric perioperative outcomes prioritized by contemporary research in this area.
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) lack regulatory status as therapeutic products in all jurisdictions worldwide. They are potentially unsafe consumer products, with significant evidence they pose a risk to human health. Therefore, developing rapid, economical test methods to assess the chemical composition of e-liquids in heated and unheated forms and the aerosols produced by e-cigarettes is crucial.
Pain is a common experience associated with healthcare for children, who often recall it as the worst part of hospitalisation. Several factors make assessment of pain more challenging in children. Families have previously identified the development of improved tools to assess pain in children as a key priority. We therefore sough to investigate the nature of this experience from the perspective of children and their parents to inform the development of such tools.
Little evidence exists on the postoperative trajectory after paediatric orthopaedic surgery. Pain and behavioural disturbance can have short- and long-term impacts on children and their families. An improved understanding of procedure-specific postoperative trajectories can enhance recovery. The primary outcome was to examine the duration and severity of postoperative pain experienced by children undergoing 10 commonly performed orthopaedic procedures.
Children experience significant pain following extracapsular tonsillectomy surgery, and while opioids are often prescribed to treat this, clinicians may be wary of their adverse side effects, leading to variation in practice. There is a need for improved post-tonsillectomy pain management in children.
Processed electroencephalography (EEG) indices used to guide anesthetic dosing in adults are not validated in young infants. Raw EEG can be processed mathematically, yielding quantitative EEG parameters (qEEG). We hypothesized that machine learning combined with qEEG can accurately classify expired sevoflurane concentrations in young infants. Knowledge from this may contribute to development of future infant-specific EEG algorithms.
The clinical consequences of an antibiotic allergy label are detrimental, impacting health care delivery and patient outcomes. We assessed hospital inpatients with intent to offer free antibiotic allergy labeling assessment within a randomized controlled trial. We sought to determine the feasibility of establishing an adult antibiotic allergy delabeling service in a Western Australian tertiary public hospital.
Tracheostomy tubes act as foreign bodies, predisposing the surrounding airway to respiratory infections. Initial treatment for infections is topical - nebulized tobramycin - although guidelines for standardized treatment are lacking.