Although anesthesia during surgery prevents children from recalling actual surgical events, they are subjected to stressful events while preparing for surgery. One estimate suggests that 60% of children experience significant anxiety before anesthesia induction and surgery, and literature from around the world indicates that preoperative anxiety is a global concern for health care providers. The challenge that nurses face is to better manage children's anxiety in today's fast paced ORs. This article uses case studies to show nursing strategies that can be used to help allay the fears of children at different psychosocial stages of development.

A variety of health care personnel are involved in the collection, storage, and administration of the 20 million units of blood products that are transfused into millions of patients each year. This article reviews blood transfusion practices, nursing care guidelines, and new developments to help perioperative nurses prevent or ameliorate adverse transfusion outcomes in surgical patients.

We conducted a randomized study in 147 pediatric patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass to determine when there are any differences in hemodynamic effects if CaCl(2) 20 mg/kg and protamine 5mg/kg are mixed together and infused over 10 min versus administering half of the calcium dose (10 mg/kg) as a bolus followed by a 10-min infusion of protamine 5 mg/kg and CaCl(2) 10mg/kg.