In general, much greater doses of local anesthetics are required to produce cardiovascular (CV) toxicity than CNS toxicity. Similar to CNS toxicity, potency for CV toxicity reflects the anesthetic potency of the agent. Recent attention has focused on the apparently exceptional cardiotoxicity of the more potent, more lipid-soluble agents (bupivacaine, levo-bupivacaine, etidocaine, ropivacaine). ...

Severe cardiac adverse effects are often related to intravenous phenytoin overdose. However, there is no reported cardiotoxicity resulting from oral overdose of phenytoin. We report a patient with post-traumatic epilepsy who received oral phenytoin for five months and developed life-threatening junctional bradycardia, with his serum phenytoin level reaching up to 91 microg/mL. The patient was s...

Anesthesiologists use a myriad of drugs during the provision of an anesthetic. Many of these drugs have side effects that are dose related, and some lead to severe immune-mediated adverse reactions. Anaphylaxis is the most severe immune-mediated reaction; it generally occurs on reexposure to a specific antigen and requires the release of proinflammatory mediators. Anaphylactoid reactions occur ...

In the heart, histamine (H3) receptors may function as inhibitory presynaptic receptors that decrease adrenergic norepinephrine release in conditions of enhanced sympathetic neural activity. We hypothesized that H3-receptor blockade might improve cardiovascular function in sepsis. In a canine model of Escherichia coli sepsis, we found that H3-receptor blockade increased cardiac output (3.6 to 5...

Habitat fragmentation is the primary cause of the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, but its underlying processes and mechanisms remain poorly understood. Studies of islands and insular terrestrial habitats are essential for improving our understanding of habitat fragmentation. We argue that the Three-Gorges Dam, the largest that humans have ever created, presents a unique grand-scale...

This paper is motivated by the following two related problems in complex networks: (i) control of cascading failures and (ii) mitigation of traffic congestion. Both problems are of significant recent interest as they address, respectively, the security of and efficient information transmission on complex networks. Taking into account typical features of load distribution and weights in real-wor...

Bacteria have attacked the cardiovascular system since time immemorial. The propensity for pathogenic bacteria to effect cardiovascular collapse and death has shaped human history. Black Death, caused by Yersinia pestis, killed tens of millions in China, the Middle East, and decimated onethird of the European population in the 14th century. More recently, fatalities from toxic Escherchia coli a...

Amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) is a rare but potentially catastrophic clinical condition, characterized by a combination of signs and symptoms that reflect respiratory distress, cardiovascular collapse and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Its pathogenesis is still unclear. More recently, the traditional view of obstruction of pulmonary capillary vessels by amniotic fluid emboli as t...