This piece deals with the prediction of opioid induced respiratory depression for our inpatients on hospital wards, could a change in monitoring practices help? The postoperative period seems to be critical, the thirty day period immediately after anesthesia being a key area. 7.7% of postoperative deaths are in this period, according to The Lancet here; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)33139-8/fulltext

What is happening in the post operative period? How do we find out more? Are hospital general care wards the safe haven we expect them to be? What should we monitor and how do we avoid "alarm fatigue"?

More on the "PRediction of Opioid-induced Respiratory Depression In Patients Monitored by capnoGraphY (PRODIGY)" trial here:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02811302

The official STOP BANG score website is here: http://www.stopbang.ca/osa/screening.php

This piece was sponsored by Medtronic.

This is part 1 of a two part piece.

Presented by Monty Mythen with Desiree Chappell and Ashish Khanna, Associate Professor, Section Head for Research, Department of Anesthesiology, Section on Critical Care Medicine,Wake Forest School of Medicine.

If you loved this piece you'll also enjoy this piece here:

Desiree’s Roundtable | Can you bite your upper lip? Assessing patients to reduce post-op respiratory complications

http://www.topmedtalk.com/desirees-roundtable-can-you-bite-your-upper-lip-assessing-patients-to-reduce-post-op-respiratory-complications-2/