Malignant Hyperthermia: “It Certainly Is” Versus “It Certainly Is Not!”

Abstract

The first case of the day in room 12 is a 4-year-old boy who is scheduled for a bilateral inguinal hernia repair. Three days before the procedure, the child had presented to pre-surgical testing for evaluation. Pertinent history includes birth at 31-week gestation, and predictably, the common morbidities of a premature infant, including lack of lung surfactant requiring a week of intubation and ventilation, apnea of prematurity, bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), hyperbilirubinemia, a grade 2 intraventricular hemorrhage, and 2 seizures. Luckily, all of these problems have resolved. The child did receive an ill-defined anesthetic for a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) line during his initial hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The Mandarin-speaking father reported that the child needed 3 days of postoperative mechanical ventilation due to lung problems related to prematurity. He did not recall any other problems.