Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease of the neuromuscular junction. Current anesthetic practice may require the use of neuromuscular blocking (NMB) drugs that act at this junction to facilitate control of the airway and allow procedures to be performed on a motionless MG patient. This competes with the goals of rapid emergence and recapture of preoperative muscle strength following anesthesia. In particular, avoiding prolonged periods of postoperative mechanical ventilation is a paramount concern of patients, families, and physicians. Standard anesthetic agents and, if needed, judiciously titrated NMB drugs generally allow safe emergence and immediate extubation for most low-risk MG patients. If necessary, postoperative mechanical ventilation is accomplished with the use of specialized monitoring devices that help monitor awareness and depth of sedation. Currently used intravenous sedatives allow titrated depth of sedation and rapid emergence when extubation is appropriate. Communication to the patient, family, and other caregivers of the goals of the anesthetic plan and of the patient's evolving status are also very important duties of the anesthesiologist.
To determine whether the filling of tracheal tube cuffs with saline would decrease their combustibility during laser surgery, 20 polyvinylchloride tracheal tubes were studied. The cuffed end of each tracheal tube was inserted into the neck of an empty flask, and the tube and flask were flushed with oxygen for 5 min before cuff inflation. Ten tracheal tubes had their cuffs inflated with air, and 10 were inflated with saline. A Lasersonics LS880 CO2 laser, set to 5 W for five of each of the two types of filled cuffs and to 40 W for the other pair of five tubes, was fired continuously at the cuffs for up to 1 min. No combustion occurred at the 5-W setting. The times to cuff perforation when the laser was set at 5 W were (mean +/- SD) 1.00 +/- 0.83 and 4.21 +/- 3.91 s for the air- and saline-filled cuffs, respectively, a difference that was not statistically significant. The time to deflation of the saline-filled cuff (104.6 +/- 67.5 s) was, however, significantly longer than that of the air-filled cuff (2.59 +/- 1.97 s). When the tracheal tube cuffs were exposed to 40-W laser radiation, the cuff and adjacent tube shaft ignited in all cases when the cuffs were inflated with air, but only in one of five cases when the cuffs were filled with saline (P less than 0.05). The filling of tracheal tube cuffs with saline provides simple, moderately effective partial protection of the cuff of endotracheal tubes during CO2 laser airway surgery.
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