Clonidine as an adjuvant to intrathecal local anesthetics for surgery: systematic review of randomized trials.

Background And Objectives: Clonidine is added to intrathecal local anesthetics to improve intraoperative analgesia and to increase the duration of sensory and motor block. The aim of this systematic review is to quantify beneficial and harmful effects of clonidine when used as an adjuvant to intrathecal local anesthetics for surgery.

Methods: We included data from 22 randomized trials (1,445 patients) testing a large variety of doses of clonidine, added to intrathecal bupivacaine, mepivacaine, prilocaine, or tetracaine.

Low-dose sufentanil does not potentiate intrathecal morphine for perioperative analgesia after major colorectal surgery.

Purpose: Both intrathecal sufentanil (ITS) and intrathecal morphine (ITM) improve analgesia in obstetrical or cardiac procedures. From a pharmacokinetic standpoint, combining these two opioids may improve perioperative analgesia. We performed a prospective randomized double-blind study to compare the analgesic efficacy of ITM alone vs a mixture of a low dose of ITS plus ITM for perioperative pain relief in colorectal surgery.

The antiemetic efficacy of droperidol added to morphine patient-controlled analgesia: a randomized, controlled, multicenter dose-finding study.

The antiemetic dose response of droperidol when it is added to patient-controlled analgesia with morphine is not well known. We randomly allocated adults who received postoperative morphine patient-controlled analgesia (1-mg bolus, 5-min lockout) to one of four regimens: no droperidol (control) or 5, 15, or 50 micro g of droperidol per milligram of morphine. Efficacy and adverse effects were recorded during 24 h and were analyzed with number needed to treat (NNT) and number needed to harm with 95% confidence intervals.

Propofol increased cerebral perfusion as compared with isoflurane during a cerebral angiography in a child with moyamoya disease.

We report the case of a child with Moyamoya disease during a cerebral angiography procedure in which the effects of propofol on the cerebral perfusion were seen to be different compared with isoflurane. We suggest propofol was associated with a better preservation of cerebral circulation compared to isoflurane in this case of Moyamoya, as it maintained blood supply to the watershed areas.