Our data demonstrate a reduction in fall incidence coinciding with the implementation of a multi-intervention fall-prevention strategy. Despite prevention efforts, patients of advanced age, elimination-related activities, and patients in the intermediate phase (late postoperative day 1 through day 3) of recovery continue to have a high risk for falling. Therefore, fall-prevention strategies should continue to provide education to all patients (especially elderly patients) and reinforce practices that will monitor patients within their hospital rooms.

Data for the second year of implementation demonstrate similarly positive results in LOS, pain control, discharge destination, readmission, transfusion rates, and complications.

No abstract

Perioperative nerve deficits not readily explained by direct surgical or anesthesia-related causes should prompt early neurologic consultation to seek alternative etiologies such as postsurgical inflammatory neuropathy. Although this condition is poorly understood, it is believed to be an idiopathic immune-mediated response to a physiologic stress (eg, surgery, regional block) and is treated with prolonged, high-dose corticosteroids. Because suppression of the immune system with high-dose steroids may result in improved neurologic outcome, it is essential that surgeons and anesthesiologists are aware of this condition so that treatment is not delayed.

This study shows that anesthesiologists prefer certain visual characteristics of needles used in sonographically guided regional anesthesia procedures. Specifically, needle tip clarity most closely predicted clinician needle preferences. These results support the idea that all echogenic needle designs do not uniformly enhance needle visualization. Further studies are needed to determine whether needles with superior tip clarity predict not only clinician preferences but also improved sonographically guided regional anesthetic outcomes.