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Research

Tonsillectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures in childhood. While generally safe, it often is associated with a difficult early recovery phase with poor oral intake, dehydration, difficult or painful swallowing, postoperative bleeding, infection and/or otalgia.

Research

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) increases the risk of perioperative adverse events in children. While polysomnography (PSG) remains the reference standard for OSA diagnosis, oximetry is a valuable screening tool. The traditional practice is the manual analysis of desaturation clusters derived from a tabletop device using the McGill oximetry score. However, automated analysis of wearable oximetry data can be an alternative. This study investigated the accuracy of wrist-worn oximetry with automated analysis as a preoperative OSA screening tool.

Research

With the deadly and highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic, there is global concern about the danger of contaminating healthcare workers (HCW), particularly during airway management of infected patients.

Research

Tonsillectomy is one of the most common pediatric surgeries and results in considerable postoperative pain. Insufficiently managed pain is costly, risks physiological and psychological consequences with multi-modal analgesia widely recommended to minimize opioid-based agents. We determined adherence to multi-modal analgesia guidelines and assessed cost-effectiveness. We undertook a cross-sectional cohort study at a tertiary pediatric institution in Perth, Western Australia, retrospectively identifying selected patients undergoing tonsillectomy over two discrete periods of 6-week duration.

Research

Exposure to surgery and anesthesia in early childhood has been found to be associated with an increased risk of behavioral deficits. While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against prenatal exposure to anesthetic drugs, little clinical evidence exists to support this recommendation. This study evaluates the association between prenatal exposure to general anesthesia due to maternal procedures during pregnancy and neuropsychological and behavioral outcome scores at age 10.

The vision of the Perioperative Medicine Team is to make discoveries that will improve children’s perioperative care and lead to global practice change.

News & Events

A leading paediatric anaesthetist and researcher focused on making anaesthesia safer and more comfortable for children has been named a 2022 Western Australian Young Tall Poppy.

The Perioperative Medicine team has developed a unique chewable tablet that gives the child the sensation of having a full stomach, without compromising their fasting regime.

Research

The administration of inhaled antibiotics to patients with upper or lower respiratory infections is sometimes conducted via a tracheostomy airway. However, precise dosing via this route remains uncertain, especially in spontaneously breathing paediatric patients. 

Research

Pain is a common experience associated with healthcare for children, who often recall it as the worst part of hospitalisation. Several factors make assessment of pain more challenging in children. Families have previously identified the development of improved tools to assess pain in children as a key priority. We therefore sough to investigate the nature of this experience from the perspective of children and their parents to inform the development of such tools.