The history of anesthesiology began only a little more than 150 years ago with the administration of the first ether anesthetic. Throughout much of the subsequent history, the risk of anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity was unacceptably high as a consequence…
Life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last several decades. An average 65-year-old woman today can expect to live an additional 20.6 years, nearly twice as long as her counterpart in 1900. An average 80-year-old female can expect to live…
The current health care environment has increased our focus on the cost and quality of surgical care. As a result, many hospitals and physicians are devoting significant efforts to understand and benchmark the risk of complications in surgical patients. One…
Surgical infections encompass a wide-ranging group of diseases, which account for a large burden of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Surgical infections include de novo infectious diseases that require surgery or procedural interventions for cure; common examples include abscesses, intraabdominal infections…
Principles of Surgical Evaluation Patient–Surgeon Relationship Clear, precise, and unambiguous communication to establish an understanding of mutual expectations and trust is at the pinnacle of the patient–surgeon relationship. A surgeon’s initial encounter with a patient most commonly is in the…
The intent of surgery is to improve health, so it was galvanizing when a series of eye-opening reports published in the 1990s provided clear evidence of high rates of serious adverse events that resulted in serious harm to hospitalized patients.…
The practice of surgery has undergone a dramatic evolution over the last century with the availability of new scientific evidence supporting the use of different surgical techniques and management. Central to this mission is the process of critically appraising the…
Regenerative medicine is a continually developing field that combines the diverse disciplines of cellular and molecular biology, tissue engineering, and biomaterial science in order to design therapies to restore or maintain cells, tissue, and organs. While many other complex organisms…
Although the treatment and healing of wounds are some of the oldest subjects discussed in the medical literature, and although there have been numerous advances in understanding the steps involved in wound healing, the exact mechanisms underlying wound healing remain…
Metabolic Science Metabolism encompasses all of the biochemical and biophysical reactions that maintain the organism-level energy homeostasis necessary for continued cellular life in response to ever-shifting environmental conditions. , Fully understanding the metabolic processes at work in living systems requires…