Key result
Depth-of-anaesthesia monitoring may reduce perioperative awareness, but excessive depth is weakly linked to increased mortality.
Why the study?
Depth-of-anaesthesia monitors may reduce perioperative awareness but are expensive and their association with mortality is unproven and unclear.
Unproven mortality link from deep anaesthesia cautions against routine monitor use for survival benefit; leaves open need for definitive RCTs.
All anaesthetists would like to be confident that their patients are asleep throughout surgery. Depth-of-anaesthesia monitors may contribute to reducing the incidence of perioperative awareness, but they are expensive, and typically require that consumables are purchased for every case.Recently, excessive depth of anaesthesia has been feebly associated with increased mortality, but this has not yet been proven, and may reflect patient co-morbidity, rather than clinician error.
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John Robert Sneyd (2012) conducted a review in Perioperative awareness. Depth-of-anaesthesia monitoring was evaluated. Depth-of-anaesthesia monitors may reduce perioperative awareness but are expensive, and excessive depth of anaesthesia has been weakly associated with increased mortality.
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