Because the analgesic effect of vitamin C against acute pain remains poorly addressed, this meta-analysis aimed at investigating its effectiveness against acute postoperative pain. A total of seven randomized controlled trials with placebo/normal controls were identified from PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medline, Google Scholar, and Embase databases. Pooled analysis showed a lower pain score (standardized mean difference (SMD) = −0.68, 95% CI: −1.01 to −0.36, p < 0.0001; I² = 57%) and a lower morphine consumption (weighted mean difference (WMD) = −2.44 mg, 95% CI: −4.03 to −0.86, p = 0.003; I² = 52%) in the vitamin group than that in the placebo group within postoperative 1–2 h. At postoperative 24 h, a lower pain score (SMD = −0.65, 95% CI: −1.11 to −0.19, p = 0.005; I² = 81%) and lower morphine consumption (WMD = −6.74 mg, 95% CI: −9.63 to −3.84, p < 0.00001; I² = 85%) were also noted in the vitamin group. Subgroup analyses demonstrated significant reductions in pain severity and morphine requirement immediately (1–2 h) and 24 h after surgery for patients receiving intravenous vitamin C but not in the oral subgroup. These findings showed significant reductions in pain score and opioid requirement up to postoperative 24 h, respectively, suggesting the effectiveness of perioperative vitamin C use. Further large-scale trials are warranted to elucidate its optimal intravenous dosage and effectiveness against chronic pain in the postoperative pain control setting.

Assessment of risk before lung resection surgery can provide anesthesiologists with information about whether a patient can be weaned from the ventilator immediately after surgery. However, it is difficult for anesthesiologists to perform a complete integrated risk assessment in a time-limited pre-anesthetic clinic. We retrospectively collected the electronic medical records of 709 patients who underwent lung resection between 1 January 2017 and 31 July 2019. We used the obtained data to construct an artificial intelligence (AI) prediction model with seven supervised machine learning algorithms to predict whether patients could be weaned immediately after lung resection surgery. The AI model with Naïve Bayes Classifier algorithm had the best testing result and was therefore used to develop an application to evaluate risk based on patients’ previous medical data, to assist anesthesiologists, and to predict patient outcomes in pre-anesthetic clinics. The individualization and digitalization characteristics of this AI application could improve the effectiveness of risk explanations and physician–patient communication to achieve better patient comprehension.

Whether nonobstetric surgery during gestation is associated with a higher risk of spontaneous abortion or adverse delivery outcomes is still unclear. We performed a retrospective case-control study using a Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID 2000) containing claim-data of 1 million randomly selected beneficiaries. We compared the incidences and estimated the adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for spontaneous abortion, adverse delivery outcomes, cesarean delivery, and prolonged hospital stay to determine the risk of adverse outcomes in women who had nonobstetric surgery during gestation as compared to those who did not have any surgery during gestation. After exclusion, we were left with 114,852 delivery and 3999 abortion cases in our study; and 462 (0.39%) of them had nonobstetric surgery under general or regional anesthesia during pregnancy. The leading surgeries were repair of cervical os (33.12%), appendectomy (17.32%), ovarian surgeries (13.64%), and fixation of fractured bone (8.01%).The risk of spontaneous abortion (4.23% vs. 2.43%, aOR:1.53; 95% CI: 1.01–2.31), antepartum hemorrhage (7.14% vs. 2.83%, aOR: 2.51; 95% CI: 1.74–3.61), pre-eclampsia/eclampsia (2.60% vs. 1.01%, aOR: 2.35; 95% CI: 1.30–4.23), gestational diabetes (2.38% vs. 0.69%, aOR: 3.12; 95% CI: 1.69–5.78), prematurity (9.06 vs. 4.90%, aOR: 3.31; 95% CI: 2.54–4.31), cesarean section (43.55% vs. 33.76%, aOR: 1.41; 95% CI: 1.17–1.71), and prolonged hospital stay (1.82% vs. 5.91%, aOR: 3.23; 95% CI: 2.16–4.83) were higher in those women who had nonobstetric surgery after adjusting for age and comorbidities. Nonobstetric surgery during gestation were associated with a higher risk of spontaneous abortion, adverse delivery outcomes, cesarean section, and prolonged hospital stay.

This study aimed at determining the prevalence and predictors of hypovitaminosis D (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D < 30 ng/mL) among office workers in a subtropical region from an electronic hospital database. Totally, 2880 office workers aged 26–65 years who received health examinations with vitamin D status and total calcium concentrations at a tertiary referral center were retrospectively reviewed. Subjects were divided into groups according to genders, age (i.e., 26–35, 36–45, 46–55, 56–65), body-mass index (BMI) (i.e., obese BMI ≥ 30, overweight 25 ≤ BMI < 30, normal 20 ≤ BMI < 25, and underweight BMI < 20) and seasons (spring/winter vs. summer/autumn) for identifying the predictors of hypovitaminosis D. Corrected total calcium level <8.4 mg/dL is considered as hypocalcemia. Multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that females (AOR 2.33, (95% CI: 1.75, 3.09)), younger age (4.32 (2.98, 6.24), 2.82 (1.93, 4.12), 1.50 (1.03, 2.17)), and season (winter/spring) (1.55 (1.08, 2.22)) were predictors of hypovitaminosis D, whereas BMI was not in this study. Despite higher incidence of hypocalcemia in office workers with hypovitaminosis D (p < 0.001), there was no association between vitamin D status and corrected total calcium levels. A high prevalence (61.9%) of hypovitaminosis D among office workers in a subtropical region was found, highlighting the importance of this occupational health issue.