Most surgical interns were not trained in prescribing narcotics in medical school. Improved pain management curriculum is necessary to assure safe and consistent opioid prescriptions.

Upper gastrointestinal (UGI) bleeding secondary to a ruptured splenic artery (SA) pseudoaneurysm into the stomach is a rare but a life-threatening condition. Owing to the low prevalence, it remains a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. A frail 77-year-old Caucasian female presented with epigastric pain and hematemesis. Endoscopy was non-diagnostic for an etiology. She then underwent diagnostic angiography that revealed an SA pseudoaneurysm with active contrast extravasation into the stomach. Subsequent transcatheter arterial coil embolization was conducted of the SA. The patient was subsequently taken for a partial gastrectomy, distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy. She had an uncomplicated postoperative course.Diagnosis of an UGI bleeding secondary to a ruptured SA pseudoaneurysm into the stomach remains difficult. However, we report that in a hemodynamically stable patient, a multidisciplinary approach can be taken, with interval optimization of the patient prior to definitive surgery for a satisfactory outcome.

BACKGROUND:Damage-control laparotomy (DCL) has been used for traumatic and nontraumatic indications. We studied factors associated with delirium and outcome in this population. METHODS:We reviewed DCL patients at 15 centers for 2 years, including demographics, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), diagnosis, operations, and outcomes. We compared 30-day mortality; renal failure requiring dialysis; number of takebacks; hospital, ventilator, and intensive care unit (ICU) days; and delirium-free and coma-free proportion of the first 30 ICU days (DF/CF-ICU-30) between trauma (T) and nontrauma (NT) patients. We performed linear regression for DF/CF-ICU-30, including age, sex, CCI, achievement of primary fascial closure (PFC), small and large bowel resection, bowel discontinuity, abdominal vascular procedures, and trauma as covariates. We performed one-way analysis of variance for DF/CF-ICU-30 against traumatic brain injury severity as measured by Abbreviated Injury Scale for the head. RESULTS:Among 554 DCL patients (25.8% NT), NT patients were older (58.9 ± 15.8 vs. 39.7 ± 17.0 years, p < 0.001), more female (45.5% vs. 22.1%, p < 0.001), and had higher CCI (4.7 ± 3.3 vs. 1.1 ± 2.2, p < 0.001). The number of takebacks (1.7 ± 2.6 vs. 1.5 ± 1.2), time to first takeback (32.0 hours), duration of bowel discontinuity (47.0 hours), and time to PFC were similar (63.2 hours, achieved in 73.5%). Nontrauma and T patients had similar ventilator, ICU, and hospital days and mortality (31.0% NT, 29.8% T). Nontrauma patients had higher rates of renal failure requiring dialysis (36.6% vs. 14.1%, p < 0.001) and postoperative abdominal sepsis (40.1% vs. 17.1%, p < 0.001). Trauma and NT patients had similar number of hours of sedative (89.9 vs. 65.5 hours, p = 0.064) and opioid infusions (106.9 vs. 96.7 hours, p = 0.514), but T had lower DF/CF-ICU-30 (51.1% vs. 73.7%, p = 0.029), indicating more delirium. Linear regression analysis indicated that Twas associated with a 32.1% decrease (95% CI, 14.6%-49.5%; p < 0.001) in DF/CF-ICU-30, while achieving PFC was associated with a 25.1% increase (95% CI, 10.2%-40.1%; p = 0.001) in DF/CFICU-30. Increasing Abbreviated Injury Scale for the head was associated with decreased DF/CF-ICU-30 by analysis of variance (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION:Nontrauma patients had higher incidence of postoperative abdominal sepsis and need for dialysis, while T was independently associated with increased delirium, perhaps because of traumatic brain injury.

Background Before and after images are commonly used on Instagram to advertise aesthetic surgical treatments and are a powerful means of prospective patient engagement. Consistency between before and after images accurately demonstrating the postoperative result on Instagram, however, has not been systematically assessed. Objectives Our aim was to systematically assess facial cosmetic surgery before and after photography bias on Instagram. Methods The authors queried 19 Instagram facial aesthetic surgery-related hashtags on 3 dates in May 2020. The “top” 9 posts associated with each hashtag (291 posts) were analyzed by 3 plastic surgeons using 5-item rubric quantifying photographic discrepancies between preoperative and postoperative images. Duplicate posts and those that did not include before and after images after facial aesthetic surgery procedures were excluded. Results A total of 3,477,178 posts were queried. Photography conditions were observed to favor visual enhancement of the post-operative result in 282/291 analyzed top posts, with an average bias score of 1.71/5 (± 1.01). Plastic surgeons accounted for only 27.5% of top posts. Physicians practicing outside their scope of practice accounted for 2.8% of top posts including a general surgeon, dermatologist, dentist, ophthalmologist, and maxillofacial surgeon. Accounts with a greater number of followers (p = 0.017) and posts originating from Asia (p = 0.013) were significantly associated with a higher post-operative photography bias score. Conclusions Photographic misrepresentation, with photography conditions biased towards enhancing the appearance of the postoperative result, is pervasive on Instagram. This pattern was observed across all physician specialties and raises significant concerns. Accounts with a greater number of followers demonstrated significantly greater postoperative photography bias, suggesting photographic misrepresentation is awarded by greater user engagement.

Purpose Damage control laparotomy (DCL) is used for both traumatic and non-traumatic indications. Failure to achieve primary fascial closure (PFC) in a timely fashion has been associated with complications including sepsis, fistula, and mortality. We sought to identify factors associated with time to PFC in a multicenter retrospective cohort. Methods We reviewed retrospective data from 15 centers in the EAST SLEEP-TIME registry, including age, comorbidities (Charlson Comorbidity Index [CCI]), small and large bowel resection, bowel discontinuity, vascular procedures, retained packs, number of re-laparotomies, net fluid balance after 24 h, trauma, and time to first takeback in 12-h increments to identify key factors associated with time to PFC. Results In total, 368 patients (71.2% trauma, of which 50.6% were penetrating, median ISS 25 [16, 34], with median Apache II score 15 [11,22] in non-trauma) were in the cohort. Of these, 92.9% of patients achieved PFC at 60.8 ± 72.0 h after 1.6 ± 1.2 re-laparotomies. Each additional re-laparotomy reduced the odds of PFC by 91.5% (95%CI 88.2-93.9%, p < 0.001). Time to first re-laparotomy was highly significant (p < 0.001) in terms of odds of achieving PFC, with no difference between 12 and 24 h to first re-laparotomy (ref), and decreases in odds of PFC of 78.4% (65.8-86.4%, p < 0.001) for first re-laparotomy after 24.1-36 h, 90.8% (84.7-94.4%, p < 0.001) for 36.1-48 h, and 98.1% (96.4-99.0%, p < 0.001) for > 48 h. Trauma patients had increased likelihood of PFC in two separate analyses (p = 0.022 and 0.002). Conclusion Time to re-laparotomy ≤ 24 h and minimizing number of re-laparotomies are highly predictive of rapid achievement of PFC in patients after trauma-and non-trauma DCL. Level of evidence 2B.