Why the study?
Does sevoflurane affect the QT interval in a patient with congenital long QT syndrome?
Does sevoflurane affect the QT interval in a patient with congenital long QT syndrome?
This case report describes the effects of sevoflurane on the QT interval in a patient with congenital long QT syndrome, contributing to the limited evidence on anesthetic safety in this specific population.
May warrant QT monitoring with sevoflurane in congenital long QT syndrome; leaves open need for prospective trials before practice change.
THE inhaled anesthetics enflurane, halothane, and isoflurane prolong the electrocardiographic QT interval in healthy patients. 1 In patients with idiopathic long QT syndrome, however, cardiac arrest and death during halothane anesthesia, 2 absence of QT interval change during enflurane administration, 3 and shortening of QT interval during isoflurane anesthesia 4 suggest that generalizations from healthy patients to patients with long QT syndromes are unjustified. Similarly, thiopental prolongs QT interval in healthy patients 5 but had no effect in patients with long QT syndrome. 6 We recently anesthetized a young woman with idiopathic long QT syndrome. We report the effects of sevoflurane on the QT interval in this patient.
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Gallagher et al. (1998) studied this question.