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J A Aldrete

Publications and source records attributed to J A Aldrete.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

A "new" needle?

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Equipment Design

Superior hypogastric plexus block for pelvic cancer pain.

Blockade of the superior hypogastric nerve plexus was performed for relief of chronic cancer related pelvic pain. The targeted sympathetic nerves lie anterior to the sacral promontory. Twenty-eight patients with neoplastic involvement of pelvic viscera secondary to cervical, prostate, and testicular cancer or radiation injury were treated with neurolytic superior hypogastric plexus block. Sympathetically mediated pain was significantly reduced or eliminated in all cases and no serious complications occurred. Superior hypogastric plexus block is recommended for diagnostic/prognostic and therapeutic purposes in patients with chronic pelvic pain, particularly when pain is of neoplastic origin.

Abdominal Pain

Halothane solubility in blood during cardiopulmonary bypass: the effect of haemodilution and hypothermia.

The influence of haemodilution and cooling on the solubility of halothane in blood during cardiopulmonary bypass was studied in six normothermic and six hypothermic patients undergoing open-heart operations. The solubility of halothane in blood was 2.17 at 30 degrees C and 1.34 at 37 degrees C. There was also an increase in the blood/gas partition coefficient of about 8.7 per cent for each degree celsius of temperature fall. These changes in haemodiluted blood explain the different anaesthetic requirements observed in patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass, either at normal temperature or at moderate hypothermia.

Cardiopulmonary Bypass

Acute neurological complications after liver transplantation with particular reference to intraoperative cerebral air embolus.

Nine of 48 adult patients who underwent orthotopic liver transplantation developed significant clinical neurological abnormalities recognized shortly after operation. Decrease in consciousness occurred with resultant coma, focal and generalized seizures and the occasional appearance of a state of akinetic mutism. Neuropathological abnormalities consisted of multifocal areas of infarction in cerebral cortex and basal ganglia in five patients, central pontine myelinolysis in five (often more extensive than usually reported), Wernicke's encephalopathy in three, glial nodules in two, and fungal abscesses in one. Alzheimer II astrocytosis was found in all brains available for retrospective study. There was direct evidence in two of the patients that air embolization from the homografts had occurred. Correlation of this with the brain infarcts in these and other cases seems reasonable. The ease with which air passed to the systemic circulation is explicable by the right to left venous--arterial shunts that are common in chronic liver disease. With the delination of this cause for the neurologic complications, measures to prevent it in future cases have been described.

Adolescent