Cardiac Physiology
Key Points 1. The cartilaginous skeleton, myocardial fiber orientation, valves, blood supply, and conduction system of the heart determine its mechanical capabilities and limitations. 2. The cardiac myocyte is engineered…
Cardiac Electrophysiology: Diagnosis and Treatment
Key Points 1. Cardiac arrhythmias are common and result from an ectopic focus or a reentry circuit. 2. Surgical and catheter-based ablative therapies can abolish the origins of arrhythmias by…
Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures in the Adult Patient
Key Points 1. The cardiac catheterization laboratory has evolved from a purely diagnostic facility to a therapeutic one in which many facets of cardiovascular disease can be effectively modified or…
Cardiac Risk, Imaging, and the Cardiology Consultation
Key Points 1. Multivariate modeling has been used to develop risk indices that focus on preoperative variables, intraoperative variables, or both. 2. Key predictors of perioperative risk are dependent on…
Pain Management in the Home: Using Cancer Patients as a Model
Pain management in the home is a family experience, as every aspect of care provided to the patient affects the family system as a whole. Successful pain management at home…
Postoperative Pain Management: Trends and Future Directions and Areas in Need of Investigation
Significant progress in the management of postoperative pain has been made since the 1990s. Increased awareness of the undertreatment of postoperative pain, improved analgesic techniques, and new analgesic agents have…
Future Directions and Trends in Pain Medicine
This chapter is divided in two main sections. The first section addresses the future of pain medicine, and the second tackles the newest trends in pain treatment. The overarching principle…
The Management of Pain from Sickle Cell Disease
Sickle cell disease (SCD) refers to a related group of genetic hemoglobin disorders. Sickle hemoglobin has a single mutation resulting in the replacement of glutamine with valine at the sixth…
The Health Implications of Disparities in Cancer and Pain Care: Unequal Burdens and Unheard Voices
Several federal agencies have acknowledged and set goals toward eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health (and health care) and promoting health equity. The literature discussing health and health care…
Clinical Trial Design Methodology for Pain Outcome Studies
It is traditionally held that the first comparative clinical trial was performed in 1747 by Dr. James Lind (1716-1794) of the British Royal Navy to identify a treatment for scurvy….
