The effect of allowing patients unlimited access to oral water in the time up until 2 h pre-operatively was the subject of a randomised, blind, controlled trial. No effect was seen on gastric volume or pH, or on plasma osmolality, and allowing water pre-operatively was associated with a reduction in anxiety in the anaesthetic room.

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SummaryWe investigated the utility of a cell-saver device for processing out-of-date red blood cells, by washing twenty bags of red blood cells that had been stored for between 36 and 55 days. The volume of recovered cells, and the characteristics of the suspension fluid, were measured before and after treatment. The ratio of free haemoglobin to total haemoglobin was up to 0.02 before processing, and up to 0.011 afterwards, changing by between À0.013 and +0.003. This ratio met the current standard for free haemoglobin (less than 0.008 in more than 75% of samples

We report the effect of an electronic alerting system that uses multiple data sources and requires minimal user interaction on doctors' behaviour in Intensive Care. Design: Observational study. Setting: University Hospital ICU. Participants: Medical staff. Intervention: Interview of medical staff, commenting on computerised expert system alerts generated without user prompting. Results: 289 alerts were generated from a list of 11 different alerts on 25 days during eight weeks. Overall, 29.06% of the alerts were considered useful. These alerts pertained to 41 of the 225 ICU patients involved (18.22%). They generated management changes in 84 of the 713 patient-days involved (11.78%). Conclusions: For minimal user-effort, this system generated one or more management changes in around one-fifth of patients at a ratio of one management change for every ten patient-days.

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