OBJECTIVES To provide a current review of the literature regarding airway problems in pregnancy and management. BACKGROUND Obstetrical anesthesia is considered to be a high-risk practice that exposes the anesthesiologist to increased medicolegal liability. Anesthetic management of a parturient is a challenge because it involves simultaneous care of both mother and baby. Failure to appropriate...

In a parity judgment task, the ERPs at parietal electrode sites become more negative as more mental rotation has to be executed. This article provides a review of the empirical evidence regarding this amplitude modulation. More specifically, experiments are reported that validate both the functional relationship between mental rotation and the amplitude modulation as well as the temporal relati...

We investigated whether concurrent processing of a tone (T1) interferes with early sensory-perceptual processing of a visual target (T2) in variants of the psychological refractory period paradigm using the event-related potential (ERP) method and 70-channel electroencephalographic recordings. T1, which required a speeded response, was presented in all trials. In half of the trials, T1 was foll...

M. A. Van Selst, E. Ruthruff, and J. C. Johnston (1999) found that practice dramatically reduced dual-task interference in a Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm with 1 vocal response and 1 manual response. Results from 3 further experiments using the highly trained participants of M. A. Van Selst et al. (1999) support 4 main conclusions: (a) A processing bottleneck exists even after ...

The apparently deleterious effect of aging on dual-task performance is well established, but there is little agreement about the source of this effect. Studies of the psychological refractory period (PRP) indicate that young adults can flexibly control dual-task performance through task-coordination strategies. Thus, the performance of older adults might differ from young adults because older a...

Why is the human brain fundamentally limited when attempting to execute two tasks at the same time or in close succession? Two classical paradigms, psychological refractory period (PRP) and task switching, have independently approached this issue, making significant advances in our understanding of the architecture of cognition. Yet, there is an apparent contradiction between the conclusions de...

BACKGROUND In recent years, patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) has been developed as an attractive alternative to continuous epidural infusion (CEI) for labor pain control. PCEA is still not popular for labor pain control in Taiwan and disparities may exist between different ethnic and cultural groups toward the attitude of labor pain control. The aim of this study was to investigate ...

Anesthetic management of a parturient with respiratory failure associated with hemoptysis, dyspnea, and orthopnea is difficult. An anesthesiologist should realize that the patient's major problem is not solved during the surgery. This circumstance is similar to a patient with associated cardiac disease scheduled for non-cardiac surgery. General anesthesia with endotracheal intubation can provid...

This study aimed to measure the synthesis of Th1 and Th2 cytokines by mononuclear cells after culture with live T. gondii and identified Th17 (CD4(+)) and Tc17 (CD8(+)) cells in toxoplasma-seronegative and toxoplasma-seropositive parturient and nonpregnant women. Cytometric bead arrays were used to measure cytokine levels (IL-2, TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-4, IL-5, and IL-10); immunophenotyping was used t...

BACKGROUND A significant number of Canadian rural communities offer local maternity services in the absence of caesarean section back-up to parturient residents. These communities are witnessing a high outflow of women leaving to give birth in larger centres to ensure immediate access to the procedure. A minority of women choose to stay in their home communities to give birth in the absence of ...