Summary Forty elderly patients (mean age 78.9 years) undergoing acute surgery for hip fracture were given at random either spinal analgesia with bupivacaine 0.75% or general anaesthesia with diazepam, fentanly and N2O/O2. Mental function was studied pre‐operatively with an abbreviated mental test and 1 week and 3 months postoperatively in both groups. Mortality and number of complications was similar in the two groups, but a shorter time of ambulation was seen in the spinal group compared to the general anaesthetic group. No persistent impairment in mental function was found after acute hip surgery under spinal or general anaesthesia and the only advantage of regional technique was a shorter time of ambulation.

The relationship between gastric emptying rate of semisolid Tc‐99m labelled Chelex‐100 resin/oatmeal and paracetamol absorption was determined simultaneously in seven healthy volunteers. There was no significant correlation between the half‐time of gastric emptying and the time of the peak serum paracetamol concentration. There was no significant correlation between the area under the serum paracetamol concentrations at 60 and 90 min and the % meal emptied in 60 and 90 min respectively. Three subjects showed a lag phase in gastric emptying pattern, while the other four showed the emptying curves without evidence of a delayed phase of emptying. Individual values of gastric emptying determined by the methods varied widely.

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Hypoglycaemia was induced by insulin injected intravenously (0.15 i.u./kg body weight) in seven healthy young males. Plasma volume was measured before and during hypoglycaemia by intravenous injection of 125I before hypoglycaemia and of 131I during hypoglycaemia. Plasma volume decreased and transcapillary escape rate increased significantly during hypoglycaemia. Skin temperature and local subcutaneous adipose tissue blood flow were measured in four different regions. Both tended to decrease during hypoglycaemia and decreased significantly 2 h after hypoglycaemia. There was no correlation between changes in the two measurements, suggesting that there is no simple relationship between subcutaneous blood flow and skin temperature during hypoglycaemia.

To assess the accuracy of the method of peranesthetic gastric intubation for emptying the liquid stomach contents, this procedure was tried on 80 patients undergoing general anesthesia. Half of the patients had a double-barrelled 16F-Argyle Salem sump tube, length 120 cm, size 16 CH, and the other half had a single-barrelled stomach tube, length 80 cm, size 25 CH. After emptying the stomach with the tubes 25 ml of glucose was given through the gastric tube to half of the Salem tube group and half of the stomach tube group. Similarly 100 ml of glucose was given to half of the Salem tube group and half of the stomach tube group. After instillation of glucose 25 ml or 100 ml, the Salem tube recovered 21.0 +/- 9.1 ml (mean +/- s.d.), median 24 ml, range 6-36 ml or 86.8 +/- 26.9 ml, median 92 ml, range 18-136 ml, respectively, and the stomach tube 17.1 +/- 10.8 ml, median 18 ml, range 2-34 ml or 54.0 +/- 28.5 ml, median 50 ml, range 14-104 ml, respectively. This indicates that the method of gastric intubation for emptying the liquid stomach contents is inaccurate.