Release Date: June 15, 2023
Two Ochsner clinician-scientists have published important work in the summer issue of the Ochsner Journal.
Bobby Nossaman, MD, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, questions prior thoracic surgery studies advocating intraoperative fluid restriction because such regimens risk postoperative complications from “masked” hypovolemia. In an analysis of 222 consecutive thoracic surgery patients, the group shows no such effect. Dose-response J-curves, rather than U-curves, clearly demonstrate that both postoperative hospital length of stay and postoperative complications decrease as intraoperative crystalloid administration rates increase.
Nossaman complements the detailed statistical analysis presented in “Rate of Intraoperative Crystalloid Administration During Thoracic Surgery Is Causal in Reducing Postoperative Hospital Length of Stay” with an editorial entitled “The Eyeball Test” that provides additional support for this potential change in intraoperative management in this patient population.
In the summer issue’s Health, Medicine, and Society column, guest columnist Eboni Price-Haywood, MD, a director of the Ochsner-Xavier Institute for Health Equity and Research, explains how the COVID-19 pandemic brought the health disparities of socially disadvantaged populations into high relief, examines factors behind Louisiana’s 50th place in America’s Health Rankings, and discusses the components of Ochsner’s Healthy State initiative that has the goal of improving the state’s ranking from 50th to 40th by 2030.
In addition to these standout articles, the Ochsner Journal summer issue also includes research from practitioners across the country in colorectal surgery, otolaryngology, and obstetrics/gynecology. Case report topics include the efficacy of cooled radiofrequency ablation and rare presentations of breast carcinoma, frontal meningioma, and spinal stenosis.
In “Transparency in Hospital Medicine Metrics: An Effective Approach to Hospital Medicine Practice Management and Influencing Positive Behavior for Everyone’s Benefit,” LSU-Shreveport hospitalist Michael Sewell, MD, makes a compelling case for letting everyone see everyone else’s performance on departmental metrics.
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