Designing of an operation theatre complex is a major exercise and is mainly intended to benefit the patient. The need for safety, convenience and economy will guide the planning of a modern operation theatre complex, whatever the size, number or the speciality. Guidelines based on current and widely accepted recom­mendations as also ones for possible expansion of the operation theatre complex are dealt with in this article.

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The provision of anaesthesia requires a high level of knowledge, sound judgement, fast and accurate responses to clinical situations, and the capacity for extended periods of vigilance. With changing expectations and arising medico-legal issues, anaesthesiologists are working round the clock to provide efficient and timely health care services, but little is thought whether the "sleep provider" is having adequate sleep. Decreased performance of motor and cognitive functions in a fatigued anaesthesiologist may result in impaired judgement, late and inadequate responses to clinical changes, poor communication and inadequate record keeping, all of which affect the patient safety, showing without doubt the association of sleep debt to the adverse events and critical incidents. Perhaps it is time that these issues be promptly addressed to prevent the silent perpetuation of a problem that is pertinent to our health and our profession. We endeavour to focus on the evidence that links patient safety to fatigue and sleepiness of health care workers and specifically on anaesthesiologists. The implications of sleep debt are deep on patient safety and strategies to prevent this are the need of the hour.

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The All India Difficult Airway Association (AIDAA) guidelines for management of the unanticipated difficult airway in adults provide a structured, stepwise approach to manage unanticipated difficulty during tracheal intubation in adults. They have been developed based on the available evidence; wherever robust evidence was lacking, or to suit the needs and situation in India, recommendations were arrived at by consensus opinion of airway experts, incorporating the responses to a questionnaire sent to members of the AIDAA and the Indian Society of Anaesthesiologists. We recommend optimum pre-oxygenation and nasal insufflation of 15 L/min oxygen during apnoea in all patients, and calling for help if the initial attempt at intubation is unsuccessful. Transnasal humidified rapid insufflations of oxygen at 70 L/min (transnasal humidified rapid insufflation ventilatory exchange) should be used when available. We recommend no more than three attempts at tracheal intubation and two attempts at supraglottic airway device (SAD) insertion if intubation fails, provided oxygen saturation remains ≥ 95%. Intubation should be confirmed by capnography. Blind tracheal intubation through the SAD is not recommended. If SAD insertion fails, one final attempt at mask ventilation should be tried after ensuring neuromuscular blockade using the optimal technique for mask ventilation. Failure to intubate the trachea as well as an inability to ventilate the lungs by face mask and SAD constitutes 'complete ventilation failure', and emergency cricothyroidotomy should be performed. Patient counselling, documentation and standard reporting of the airway difficulty using a 'difficult airway alert form' must be done. In addition, the AIDAA provides suggestions for the contents of a difficult airway cart.

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Anaesthesia is one of the few sub-specialties of medicine, which has quickly adapted technology to improve patient safety. This application of technology can be seen in patient monitoring, advances in anaesthesia machines, intubating devices, ultrasound for visualisation of nerves and vessels, etc., Anaesthesia machines have come a long way in the last 100 years, the improvements being driven both by patient safety as well as functionality and economy of use. Incorporation of safety features in anaesthesia machines and ensuring that a proper check of the machine is done before use on a patient ensures patient safety. This review will trace all the present safety features in the machine and their evolution.

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Clinical application of anatomical and physiological knowledge of respiratory system improves patient's safety during anaesthesia. It also optimises patient's ventilatory condition and airway patency. Such knowledge has influence on airway management, lung isolation during anaesthesia, management of cases with respiratory disorders, respiratory endoluminal procedures and optimising ventilator strategies in the perioperative period. Understanding of ventilation, perfusion and their relation with each other is important for understanding respiratory physiology. Ventilation to perfusion ratio alters with anaesthesia, body position and with one-lung anaesthesia. Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction, an important safety mechanism, is inhibited by majority of the anaesthetic drugs. Ventilation perfusion mismatch leads to reduced arterial oxygen concentration mainly because of early closure of airway, thus leading to decreased ventilation and atelectasis during anaesthesia. Various anaesthetic drugs alter neuronal control of the breathing and bronchomotor tone.

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Scoliosis may be of varied etiology and tends to cause a restrictive ventilatory defect, along with ventilation-perfusion mismatch and hypoxemia. There is also cardiovascular involvement in the form of raised right heart pressures, mitral valve prolapse or congenital heart disease. Thus a careful pre-anaesthetic evaluation and optimization should be done. Intraoperatively temperature and fluid balance, positioning, spinal cord integrity testing and blood conservation techniques are to be kept in mind. Postoperatively, intensive respiratory therapy and pain management are prime concerns.

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Paediatric spinal anesthesia is not only a safe alternative to general anaesthesia but often the anaesthesia technique of choice in many lower abdominal and lower limb surgeries in children. The misconception regarding its safety and feasibility is broken and is now found to be even more cost-effective. It is a much preferred technique especially for the common daycase surgeries generally performed in the paediatric age group. There is no require­ment of any additional expensive equipment either and this procedure can be easily performed in peripheral centers. However, greater acceptance and experience is yet desired for this technique to become popular.

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Advances in the field of labour analgesia have tread a long journey from the days of ether and chloroform in 1847 to the present day practice of comprehensive programme of labour pain management using evidence-based medicine. Newer advances include introduction of newer techniques like combined spinal epidurals, low-dose epidurals facilitating ambulation, pharmacological advances like introduction of remifentanil for patient-controlled intravenous analgesia, introduction of newer local anaesthetics and adjuvants like ropivacaine, levobupivacaine, sufentanil, clonidine and neostigmine, use of inhalational agents like sevoflourane for patient-controlled inhalational analgesia using special vaporizers, all have revolutionized the practice of pain management in labouring parturients. Technological advances like use of ultrasound to localize epidural space in difficult cases minimizes failed epidurals and introduction of novel drug delivery modalities like patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) pumps and computer-integrated drug delivery pumps have improved the overall maternal satisfaction rate and have enabled us to customize a suitable analgesic regimen for each parturient. Recent randomized controlled trials and Cochrane studies have concluded that the association of epidurals with increased caesarean section and long-term backache remains only a myth. Studies have also shown that the newer, low-dose regimes do not have a statistically significant impact on the duration of labour and breast feeding and also that these reduce the instrumental delivery rates thus improving maternal and foetal safety. Advances in medical technology like use of ultrasound for localizing epidural space have helped the clinicians to minimize the failure rates, and many novel drug delivery modalities like PCEA and computer-integrated PCEA have contributed to the overall maternal satisfaction and safety.

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After WTG Morton's first public demonstration in 1846 of use of ether as an anaesthetic agent, for many years anaesthesiologists did not require a machine to deliver anaesthesia to the patients. After the introduction of oxygen and nitrous oxide in the form of compressed gases in cylinders, there was a necessity for mounting these cylinders on a metal frame. This stimulated many people to attempt to construct the anaesthesia machine. HEG Boyle in the year 1917 modified the Gwathmey's machine and this became popular as Boyle anaesthesia machine. Though a lot of changes have been made for the original Boyle machine still the basic structure remains the same. All the subsequent changes which have been brought are mainly to improve the safety of the patients. Knowing the details of the basic machine will make the trainee to understand the additional improvements. It is also important for every practicing anaesthesiologist to have a thorough knowledge of the basic anaesthesia machine for safe conduct of anaesthesia.

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Mapleson breathing systems are used for delivering oxygen and anaesthetic agents and to eliminate carbon dioxide during anaesthesia. They consist of different components: Fresh gas flow, reservoir bag, breathing tubes, expiratory valve, and patient connection. There are five basic types of Mapleson system: A, B, C, D and E depending upon the different arrangements of these components. Mapleson F was added later. For adults, Mapleson A is the circuit of choice for spontaneous respiration where as Mapleson D and its Bains modifications are best available circuits for controlled ventilation. For neonates and paediatric patients Mapleson E and F (Jackson Rees modification) are the best circuits. In this review article, we will discuss the structure of the circuits and functional analysis of various types of Mapleson systems and their advantages and disadvantages.

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Achieving adequate depth of anaesthesia during surgical procedures is desirable. Therefore, assessment and monitoring/ measurement of the depth of anaesthesia are fundamental to anaesthetic practice. The purpose of this review is to identify the risk factors that may be associated with intraoperative awareness, provide decision tools that may enable the clinician to reduce the frequency of unintended intraoperative awareness, stimulate the pursuit and evaluation of strategies that may prevent or reduce the frequency of intraoperative awareness, different types of tools developed to date to monitor the depth of anaesthesia, provide guidance for the intraoperative use of different monitoring tools as they relate to intraoperative awareness and how to approach a patient when awareness is reported by the patient along with current guidelines in the use of current available monitors.

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Recent advances in neurosurgery, neuromonitoring and neurointensive care have dramatically improved the outcome in patients affected by surgical lesions of central nervous system (CNS). Although most of these techniques were applied first in the adult population, paediatric patients present a set of inherent challenges because of their developing and maturing neurological and physiological status, apart from the CNS disease process. To provide optimal neuroanaesthesia care, the anaesthesiologist must have the knowledge of basic neurophysiology of developing brain and effects of various drugs on cerebral haemodynamics apart from the specialised training on paediatric neuroanaesthesia. This article highlights on the perioperative management of paediatric neurosurgical patients.

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Anaemia in pregnancy defined as haemoglobin (Hb) level of < 10 gm/dL, is a qualitative or quantitative deficiency of Hb or red blood cells in circulation resulting in reduced oxygen (O ₂ )-carrying capacity of the blood. Compensatory mechanisms in the form of increase in cardiac output (CO), PaO ₂ , 2,3 diphosphoglycerate levels, rightward shift in the oxygen dissociation curve (ODC), decrease in blood viscosity and release of renal erythropoietin, get activated to variable degrees to maintain tissue oxygenation and offset the decreases in arterial O ₂ content. Parturients with concomitant medical diseases or those with acute ongoing blood losses may get decompensated, leading to serious consequences like right heart failure, angina or tissue hypoxemia in severe anaemia. Preoperative evaluation is aimed at assessing the severity and cause of anaemia. The concept of an acceptable Hb level varies with the underlying medical condition, extent of physiological compensation, the threat of bleeding and ongoing blood losses. The main anaesthetic considerations are to minimize factors interfering with O ₂ delivery, prevent any increase in oxygen consumption and to optimize the partial pressure of O ₂ in the arterial blood. Both general anaesthesia and regional anaesthesia can be employed judiciously. Monitoring should focus mainly on the adequacy of perfusion and oxygenation of vital organs. Hypoxia, hyperventilation, hypothermia, acidosis and other conditions that shift the ODC to left should be avoided. Any decrease in CO should be averted and aggressively treated.

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchial asthma often complicate the surgical patients, leading to post-operative morbidity and mortality. Many authors have tried to predict post-operative pulmonary complications but not specifically in COPD. The aim of this review is to provide recent evidence-based guidelines regarding predictors and ventilatory strategies for mechanical ventilation in COPD and bronchial asthma patients. Using Google search for indexing databases, a search for articles published was performed using various combinations of the following search terms: 'Predictors'; 'mechanical ventilation'; COPD'; 'COPD'; 'bronchial asthma'; 'recent strategies'. Additional sources were also identified by exploring the primary reference list.

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Shivering is common problem faced by an anaesthesiologist during intraoperative as well as in postoperative period. Shivering occurs during both general anaesthesia and regional anaesthesia, but it is more frequent and troublesome during regional anaesthesia. This randomized, prospective study conducted in 60 ASA grade I, II, or III patients, was designed to explore the efficacy and potency of Tramadol in comparison to Pethidine for control of shivering under regional anaesthesia. Patients received Tramadol or Pethidine in a dose of 1mg.kg ^-1 I.V after the appearance of shivering. Disappearance and recurrence of shivering, as well as haemodynamics were observed at scheduled intervals. Onset of disappearance of shivering was found at 1 minute in Tramadol group (T)( p < 0.05) and at 3 minutes in Pethidine group (P)( p < 0.05 ). The complete disappearance of shivering took 5 minutes in T group while 20 minutes in P group.Reccurence rate of shivering was 10% in T and 50% in P group patients respectively (p < 0.05). None of the patients had any complications except nausea and vomiting (6.6% and 20% in group T and P respectively, p> 0.05). Thus Tramadol and Pethidine were equally efficacious, but Tramadol was more potent with respect to control of shivering and its recurrence .It was concluded that I.V Tramadol is qualitatively superior to Pethidine for control of shivering.

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Perioperative fluid, electrolyte and blood transfusion therapy for infants and children can be confusing due the numerous opinions, formulas and clinical applications, which can result in a picture that is not practical and is often misleading. Perioperatively, crystalloids, colloids and blood components are required to meet the ongoing losses and for maintaining cardiovascular stability to sustain adequate tissue perfusion. Recently controversies have been raised regarding historically used formulas and practices of glucose containing hypotonic maintenance crystalloid solutions for perioperative fluid therapy in children. Paediatric intraoperative transfusion therapy, particularly the approach to massive blood transfusion (blood loss ≥ one blood volume) can be quite complex because of the unique relationship between the patient's blood volume and the volume of the individual blood product transfused. A meticulous fluid, electrolyte and blood transfusion management is required in paediatric patients perioperatively because of an extremely limited margin for error. This article reviews the basic concepts in perioperative fluid and blood transfusion therapy for paediatric patients, along with recent recommendations. For this review, Pubmed, Ovid MEDLINE, HINARI and Google scholar were searched without date restrictions. Search terms included the following in various combinations: Perioperative, fluid therapy, paediatrics, blood transfusion, electrolyte disturbances and guidelines. Only articles with English translation were used.

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Coagulation is a dynamic process and the understanding of the blood coagulation system has evolved over the recent years in anaesthetic practice. Although the traditional classification of the coagulation system into extrinsic and intrinsic pathway is still valid, the newer insights into coagulation provide more authentic description of the same. Normal coagulation pathway represents a balance between the pro coagulant pathway that is responsible for clot formation and the mechanisms that inhibit the same beyond the injury site. Imbalance of the coagulation system may occur in the perioperative period or during critical illness, which may be secondary to numerous factors leading to a tendency of either thrombosis or bleeding. A systematic search of literature on PubMed with MeSH terms 'coagulation system, haemostasis and anaesthesia revealed twenty eight related clinical trials and review articles in last 10 years. Since the balance of the coagulation system may tilt towards bleeding and thrombosis in many situations, it is mandatory for the clinicians to understand physiologic basis of haemostasis in order to diagnose and manage the abnormalities of the coagulation process and to interpret the diagnostic tests done for the same.

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The cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines of compression-only life support (COLS) for management of the victim with cardiopulmonary arrest in adults provide a stepwise algorithmic approach for optimal outcome of the victim outside the hospital by untrained laypersons. These guidelines have been developed to recommend practical, uniform and acceptable resuscitation algorithms across India. As resuscitation data of the Indian population are inadequate, these guidelines have been based on international literature. The guidelines have been recommended after discussion among Indian experts and the recommendations modified to ensure its practical applicability across the country. The COLS emphasises on early recognition of cardiac arrest and activation, early chest compression and early transfer to medical facility. The guidelines emphasise avoidance of any interruption of chest compression, and thus relies primarily on chest compression-only CPR by laypersons.

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Currently, the role of ultrasound (US) in anaesthesia-related airway assessment and procedural interventions is encouraging, though it is still ill defined. US can visualise anatomical structures in the supraglottic, glottic and subglottic regions. The floor of the mouth can be visualised by both transcutaneous view of the neck and also by transoral or sublinguial views. However, imaging the epiglottis can be challenging as it is suspended in air. US may detect signs suggestive of difficult intubation, but the data are limited. Other possible applications in airway management include confirmation of correct endotracheal tube placement, prediction of post-extubation stridor, evaluation of soft tissue masses in the neck prior to intubation, assessment of subglottic diameter for determination of paediatric endotracheal tube size and percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy. With development of better probes, high-resolution imaging, real-time picture and clinical experience, US has become the potential first-line noninvasive airway assessment tool in anaesthesia and intensive care practice.

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The practice of regional anaesthesia is rapidly changing with the introduction of ultrasound into the working domain of the anaesthesiologist. New techniques are being pioneered. Among the recent techniques, notable are the truncal blocks, for example, the transversus abdominis plane block, rectus sheath block, hernia block and quadratus lumborum block in the abdomen and the pectoral nerves (Pecs) block 1 and 2, serratus anterior plane block and intercostal nerve block. This narrative review covers the brief anatomical discourse along with technical description of the ultrasound-guided truncal blocks.

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The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has become a disease of public health importance. Among the various risk factors, smoking remains the main culprit. In addition to airway obstruction, the presence of intrinsic positive end expiratory pressure, respiratory muscle dysfunction contributes to the symptoms of the patient. Perioperative management of these patients includes identification of modifiable risk factors and their optimisation. Use of regional anaesthesia alone or in combination with general anaesthesia improves pulmonary functions and reduces the incidence of post-operative pulmonary complications.

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