JMIR Perioperative Medicine

Trauma-informed care (TIC) education plays a pivotal role in preparing physicians to deliver care to patients who have experienced emotional and physical trauma, empowering patients to have agency in their care. The delivery of TIC by providers is especially important at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), as their patients disproportionately experience trauma due to the impacts of socioeconomic determinants of health, including limited health care access, systemic racism, and housing insecurity. There is limited literature on how to adapt TIC practices in acute care settings, specifically for emergency medicine and surgical providers who deliver care in high-demand, time-constrained environments.

Distal radius malunions occur in 5% to 17% of fractures and may lead to pain and functional impairment. While 3D surgical planning with patient-specific guides has demonstrated high accuracy and reduced fluoroscopy use compared with conventional 2D techniques, its routine clinical implementation remains limited, particularly for in-house hospital-based workflows.

Patient satisfaction is a key indicator of health care quality, and it guides improvement efforts. Although many local studies have examined perioperative patient satisfaction in Ethiopia, there is no comprehensive national synthesis. This gap limits the development of targeted strategies to enhance patient care.

Postoperative complications contribute significantly to patient morbidity and mortality. Early prediction of such complications could enable the care team to intervene promptly and improve patient outcomes. Existing surgical risk scores are easy to use but lack accuracy and do not provide individualized risk or guidance for clinical decision-making.

Surgical site infections (SSIs) affect 160,000 to 300,000 patients annually, increasing postoperative mortality, causing significant complications, and incurring US $3.5 to US $10 billion in excess costs each year. Effective SSI surveillance can inform strategies to mitigate these outcomes. Traditional SSI surveillance methods, primarily manual chart reviews, are costly and labor-intensive.

Open appendectomy is commonly performed under either general or spinal anesthesia. Postoperative quality of recovery, a multidimensional patient-centered measure of outcomes after surgery, is affected by the choice of anesthesia technique.

The contemporary causes of postoperative mortality in orthopedic surgery are not well characterized.

Effective postoperative communication is vital for patient recovery, yet traditional text-based discharge instructions often lead to poor comprehension and adherence, particularly among patients with limited health literacy. Although educational videos improve understanding and retention, their widespread use has been hampered by high production costs. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers a scalable solution for creating engaging video content.

Orthopedic trauma skills training is time-consuming and expensive. Current training modalities rely heavily on synthetic bone models, anatomical laboratory simulations, or assistance in surgeries (the apprenticeship model). Virtual reality (VR) appears to present a promising complement to current training modalities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) models are being increasingly integrated into clinical care. Moreover, the availability of publicly accessible AI resources makes them attractive to patients seeking clinical information. Little is known regarding the use of large language models as patient resources for navigating major cancer diagnoses.

There is mounting evidence to suggest that immersive virtual reality (IVR) can improve pain in older adults in community settings, yet the use of IVR postoperatively in the acute postoperative period following major elective abdominal surgery remains largely underexplored.

Measuring the optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) with ultrasound is a promising, noninvasive way to estimate intracranial pressure (ICP). While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides high-resolution imaging, it is less accessible in urgent or perioperative settings. Comparing ONSD measurements between ultrasound and MRI may help confirm the use of ultrasound in neurosurgical patients.