Changes in blood glucose levels in children during surgery have been found not to follow the pattern reported in adults, no relationship being found between the "stressfulness" of the operation and the rate of rise of blood glucose concentration. In 10 per cent of the children studied the blood glucose level immediately after induction was within the hypoglycaemic range.

LHB is simple, easy and safe to implement, and is the only technique capable of maintaining independent upper and lower body perfusion pressure. Potentially, it provides the best spinal cord protection, and extends the margin of safety and time to execute an accurate repair.

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The use of the Hemochron activated clotting time (ACT) for determining adequacy of reversal of heparin following cardiopulmonary bypass was evaluated in 20 patients and compared with standard laboratory tests of coagulation. The commonly used Celite ACT method proved too insensitive to have any useful predictive value in detecting or quantifying residual heparin and removal of the Celite activation rendered the test even less sensitive. In contrast, the partial thromboplastin time with kaolin (PTTK) proved to correlate well with residual heparin ( r = 0.79). It is, therefore, recommended that the use of the Hemochron following protamine administration be abandoned in favour of the PTTK.

An architecture is presented which provides clinical information systems with access to vital sign information from medical devices. Middleware components encapsulate details of communicating with devices whilst adoption of de facto and international standards maximizes interoperability with client software. An application in routine clinical use is described.