Surgical site infections in a "high outlier" institution: are colorectal surgeons to blame?
Participation in the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program brought attention to our high rate of SSI, which appeared to be due to a high proportion of colorectal patients, a high-risk subset. Further analysis identified unique SSI risk factors in this subgroup; most are not amenable to modification. Colorectal surgery may require unique risk adjustment for SSIs because of the nature of the operations and inherent risk of SSIs.
A commercially available lipid emulsion was able to delay progression of cocaine cardiac toxicity in vivo. Further, it improved acute cocaine- and cocaethylene-induced cardiac toxicity in rat isolated heart while SBE-β-CD was effective only at the highest cocaine concentration. Further, both cocaine and cocaethylene inhibited lipid-dependent mitochondrial respiration. Collectively, this suggests that scavenging-independent effects of lipid emulsion may contribute to reversal of acute cocaine and cocaethylene cardiotoxicity, and the beneficial effects may involve mitochondrial lipid processing.