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Context: Perioperative analgesia is an essential but frequently underrated component of medical care. The purpose of this work is to describe the actual situation of surgical patients focusing on effective pain control by discarding prejudice against 'aggressive' measures. Evidence Acquisition: This is a narrative review about continuous regional pain therapy with catheters in the postoperative period. Included are the most-relevant literature as well as own experiences. Results: As evidenced by an abundance of studies, continuous regional/neuraxial blocks are the most effective approach for relief of severe postoperative pain. Catheters have to be placed in adequate anatomical positions and meticulously maintained as long as they remain in situ. Peripheral catheters in interscalene, femoral, and sciatic positions are effective in patients with surgery of upper and lower limbs. Epidural catheters are effective in abdominal and thoracic surgery, birth pain, and artery occlusive disease, whereas paravertebral analgesia may be beneficial in patients with unilateral approach of the truncus. However, failure rates are high, especially for epidural catheter analgesia. Unfortunately, many reports lack a comprehensive description of catheter application, management, failure rates and complications and thus cannot be compared with each other. Conclusions: Effective control of postoperative pain is possible by the application of regional/neuraxial catheters, measures requiring dedication, skill, effort, and funds. Standard operating procedures contribute to minimizing complications and adverse side effects. Nevertheless, these methods are still not widely accepted by therapists, although more than 50% of postoperative patients suffer from 'moderate, severe or worst' pain.

Several parameters indicating quality of stored blood were constant in whole blood independent of the kind of preparation during a storage of 49 days. This is in contrast to the main part of specific scientific communications. A beneficial influence of leukocyte depletion was observed for some coagulation parameters whereas increasing characteristics of activated coagulation in CPDA1-stored whole blood at the end of storage time had to be observed. The preparation of whole CPDA1-blood is recommended for autologous predonation, if storage time does not exceed 30 days. Storage time of > 40 days seems to be possible for autologous whole blood after filtration for leucocyte depletion.

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Volume preload corresponding with an estimated interstitial space replacement was suitable for application to pediatric patients undergoing major abdominal surgery.