A novel electronic algorithm for detecting potentially insufficient anesthesia: implications for the prevention of intraoperative awareness.

Objective: A recent clinical trial compared a minimum alveolar concentration (MAC)-based protocol to an electroencephalography (EEG)-based protocol for the prevention of intraoperative awareness. One limitation of this study design is that MAC-based protocols are not sensitive to the use of intravenous agents, while EEG-based protocols are. Our objective was to develop a MAC alert that incorporates intravenous agents.

Methods: We developed an electronic algorithm and alerting system that calculates a total age-adjusted MAC value based on inhalational agents, but also incorporates intravenous agents. We retrospectively applied the algorithm to adult general anesthesia cases over a 1 year period to assess the frequency of alert triggers, using thresholds of <0.8, <0.7, <0.6, <0.5 and <0.4 age-adjusted MAC. We also electronically analyzed 12 cases of intraoperative awareness that occurred over a 4-year period for the frequency of alert triggers using the same thresholds. Finally, we calculated positive and negative likelihood ratios based on these analyses.

Results: Over a 1-year period we identified 15,091 cases without self-reported awareness that were valid for analysis. At all age-adjusted MAC thresholds, the incidence of triggered alerts was higher in the awareness cases. The threshold of<0.8 age-adjusted MAC was associated with the highest negative likelihood ratio; the<0.5 age-adjusted MAC was associated with the highest positive likelihood ratio.

Conclusions: Our novel electronic alerting system incorporates both age-adjusted MAC and intravenous anesthesia, and triggers with a higher frequency in cases of awareness. These data suggest the potential for our system to alert clinicians to insufficient anesthesia.