Perioperative News and Research

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New slow-release drug delivery system provides weeks of pain-numbing anesthetic effects

Most local anesthetics used in medicine only last eight to 12 hours or a day tops. Now Boston Children's Hospital researchers have formulated a more effective slow-release injectable drug delivery system that achieved pain-numbing anesthetic effects lasting two to three weeks in rats compared to a commercial formulation lasting about four to eight hours.

23 Sep 2026

Neoadjuvant atezolizumab addition quadruples pathological responses in resectable lung tumors

Patients with resectable stage II–IIIB non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with perioperative atezolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy experienced a median event-free survival of 62.8 months compared with 34.9 months for patients receiving chemotherapy alone, according to final results from the Phase 3 IMpower030 trial.

12 Sep 2026

New treatment approach preserves organs, improves survival in head and neck cancer patients

Patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) whose tumors responded to neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy (ICT) and who underwent less extensive surgery had high disease-free survival and organ preservation rates.

10 Sep 2026

New integrated framework advances precision surgery for liver cancer

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the sixth most common malignancy and the third leading cause of cancer-related death globally.

9 Sep 2026

Post-surgery immunotherapy may not benefit specific lung cancer patients

A new real-world observational study has found that adding adjuvant immunotherapy after surgery does not significantly improve survival outcomes in patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have already achieved a pathological complete response (pCR) following neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy.

2 Sep 2026

Study confirms benefits of robotic gastric cancer surgery

Surgery remains the primary curative treatment for gastric cancer, with laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) established as a standard minimally invasive approach.

24 Aug 2026

UVA researchers find how postoperative delirium may set the stage for dementia

UVA Health researchers have discovered how a form of delirium that often strikes older patients after surgery may set the stage for dementia – and identified a drug that could reverse the underlying brain changes.

18 Aug 2026

Surgical decisions remain complex for infants with severe necrotizing enterocolitis

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) mainly affects premature and low-birth-weight (LBW) newborns and carries poor outcomes once surgery is required.

14 Aug 2026

Humanoid robots could take on low-risk operating room tasks before assisting surgical teams

A new perspective proposes a staged framework for introducing humanoid robots into operating rooms, beginning with laboratory testing and low-risk perioperative tasks. The authors argue that humanoids could support supplies, equipment, room turnover, and selected nursing functions, but autonomous clinical use remains premature and requires rigorous validation, governance, and human oversight.

14 Jul 2026

Robot-guided surgery successfully drains multiple deep brain abscesses

Brain abscesses located deep within the brain can rapidly become life-threatening and are often difficult to treat through conventional surgery. Brain abscesses located deep within the brain can rapidly become life-threatening and are often difficult to treat through conventional surgery.

13 Jul 2026

New safety strategies reduced serious surgical events in children

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago achieved more than a 13-fold improvement in surgical safety after implementing a series of interventions based on high reliability principles across its operating rooms.

1 Jul 2026

Tranexamic acid reduces surgical transfusions without raising clot risks

A landmark clinical trial published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine found that tranexamic acid reduced transfusions across major surgeries without increasing the risk of dangerous blood clots.

10 Jun 2026

High obesity levels linked to fewer surgical procedures in Americans

Researchers from LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center and collaborating institutions have found that Americans with the highest levels of obesity are undergoing fewer surgical procedures overall.

9 Jun 2026

Organ transplant survival rates improve despite persistent donor shortages

More adults are surviving both the wait for an organ and transplant surgery, but the number of people who need transplants continues to exceed the number of organs available, especially for kidneys, according to a national analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).

4 Jun 2026

High-risk prostate cancer patients benefit from perioperative apalutamide therapy

High-risk localized and locally advanced prostate cancer patients treated with apalutamide - a next generation neoadjuvant androgen-receptor pathway inhibitor (ARPI) - plus hormone therapy before and after prostate cancer surgery resulted in more major pathologic responses and reduced the risk of metastasis or death, meeting both primary endpoints, in an international phase 3 clinical trial led by principal investigator Mary-Ellen Taplin, MD, medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Adam Kibel, MD, chair of the Department of Urology at Mass General Brigham.

31 May 2026

Review explores diagnosis and management of perioperative anaphylaxis during anesthesia

Perioperative anaphylaxis is a rare, life‑threatening condition during anesthesia. The unique setting – multiple drugs, patient draping, and altered physiology – causes higher mortality than anaphylaxis elsewhere.

29 May 2026

Novel wearable ultrasound patch improves high-risk pregnancy monitoring

Current fetal monitoring tools for physicians to closely follow high-risk pregnancies are inadequate, so researchers at Stanford Medicine, the University of California San Diego and Oxford University developed a wearable ultrasound patch to monitor such pregnancies.

26 May 2026

Engineers develop wearable ultrasound patch for continuous fetal monitoring

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have created a soft, wearable ultrasound patch that can continuously monitor a fetus for hours at a time - and it can do so consistently even as the fetus and umbilical cord constantly move during pregnancy.

26 May 2026

Perioperative medicine emerges as a system wide strategy for better surgery outcomes

Perioperative medicine is emerging as a transformative, comprehensive, system-wide approach to patient care before, during, and after surgery – that reduces complication rates and hospital days, provides better health outcomes, and improves health system performance, according to a special article in the Online First edition of Anesthesiology, the peer-reviewed medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA).

14 May 2026

Breathing polluted air before surgery may worsen recovery outcomes

Findings indicate that elevated fine PM exposure before surgery correlates with higher postoperative complication rates, urging further research in this area.

11 May 2026