New surgery shows
early success
Short bowel procedure proves simple
and effective
Heung
Bae Kim, MD, never gave up on the good idea he had for improving
the surgical outcomes of patients with short bowel syndrome (SBS).
In fact, all he needed was a receptive audience, and a decade
of thinking about the surgery quickly turned into finding a way
to make it work.
Until now, SBS has been treated with a surgery called the Bianchi
procedure, in which the bowel is bisected and one end is sewn
to the other. In these cases, however, the bowel often re-dilates,
leaving patients in the same condition as when they started.
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Scheduled caseload
proves key to capacity
Study indicates demand fluctuations
may be controllable
After more than a decade of downsizing, many hospitals throughout
the country are experiencing system stress in their emergency
departments due to diminished capacity. Patterns of erratic patient
flow with intermittent periods of extreme overload have long been
familiar to anesthesiologists, intensivists and critical care
providers working on busy hospital units. Overcrowding and ambulance
diversion are widely recognized as public health problems and
threats to emergency preparedness. This roller coaster workload
often can mean delayed care, cancelled procedures, “boarding”
and refused admission—as well as staff burnout and patient dissatisfaction.
Typically, hospitals face only two solutions: rationing resources
or continuing to add staff and beds.
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