Preoperative α-blockade in catecholamine-secreting tumours: fight for it or take flight?

<span class="paragraphSection">Dating back at least to the early report of Charles Mayo in 1927, phaeochromocytoma, a catecholamine-secreting tumour of adrenal chromaffin cells, has been considered a surgically curable cause of hypertension.<a href="#aew414-B1" class="reflinks">¹</a> In the first half of the 20th century, however, the provision of anaesthesia for a laparotomy and resection of adrenal phaeochromocytoma and the related paraganglionoma (a tumour of extra-adrenal chromaffin tissue) was one of the greatest challenges faced by members of the fledgling specialty.<a href="#aew414-B2" class="reflinks">^2–4</a> Thirty years ago in the <span style="font-style:italic;">British Journal of Anaesthesia</span>, Hull<a href="#aew414-B5" class="reflinks">⁵</a> reflected further back to the early days of phaeochromocytoma surgery when perioperative mortality was as high as 30–45%.</span>

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