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Dose-related effect of sevoflurane sedation on higher control of eye movements and decision making
S A R Nouraei1, N De Pennington, J G Jones
1University Department of Anaesthesia, Level 4, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge UK.
Background:
Saccadic latency may provide an objective method to assess sedative doses of anaesthetic on cortical oculomotor mechanisms and decision making.
Methods:
We tested the effects of random doses of 0, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 MAC sevoflurane in six subjects, in a double-blind study using two measures of behavioural impairment: saccadic latency and stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in a countermanding task.
Results:
Saccadic latency and SSRT both increased with increasing doses of sevoflurane. In both measures, reciprocal reaction time was linearly related to dose in each subject: all but two of the twelve regression coefficients were statistically significant (P<0.05). In one subject, SSRT was significantly more sensitive than simple latency (P<0.05); for the others there was no significant difference.
Conclusion:
Measurements of this kind could potentially provide estimates of cortical effects of sevoflurane sedation, and give a clinically useful measure of cognitive fitness.
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