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ANESTHETIC PHARMACOLOGY

Changes in Consciousness, Conceptual Memory, and Quantitative Electroencephalographical Measures During Recovery from Sevoflurane- and Remifentanil-Based Anesthesia

Waikato Clinical School, Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, New Zealand

Address correspondence and reprint requests to James Wallace Sleigh, MD, Waikato Clinical School, Waikato Hospital, Private Bag, Hamilton, New Zealand. Address e-mail to sleighj{at}hwl.co.nz

It is unclear whether opioid-induced changes in electroencephalogram (EEG) or auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) reliably correspond with consciousness. We examined the correlation between 1) the clinically assessed state of consciousness, 2) implicit and explicit memory (by use of word pairs), and 3) various measures of EEG and AEP—bispectral index (BIS), A-Line ARX AEP index, spectral entropy, and entropy of the singular value decomposition (SVDEN; a measure of the complexity of the EEG). We studied 21 women during a two-stage awakening (sevoflurane washout followed by remifentanil washout) after anesthesia for gynecological surgery. All were amnesic, and 19 were unresponsive to verbal command with remifentanil alone. In six patients, BIS decreased paradoxically as the remifentanil concentration decreased; this was caused by a low-amplitude EEG, which was misinterpreted by the Aspect algorithm as burst suppression. Most of the EEG/AEP variables were sensitive to the decrease in sevoflurane and the recovery of consciousness, but not to the effects of decreasing remifentanil concentrations. SVDEN was the only variable that demonstrated significant increases for both the sevoflurane and remifentanil washout phases. With the prediction probability statistic during remifentanil washout, SVDEN = 0.79, spectral entropy = 0.81, A-Line ARX AEP index = 0.63, and BIS = 0.58. Entropy measures appear to be worthy of further clinical evaluation in a larger series of patients. SVDEN may be a useful variable for assessing anesthetic and analgesic effects on the central nervous system.

IMPLICATIONS: During the recovery phase from a remifentanil-based anesthetic, the bispectral index is not reliably predictive of the depth of consciousness, because of suppression ratio artifacts. Entropy measures of the electroencephalogram show promise, but there is still no gold standard to estimate anesthetic depth.

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