Cardiac protection with volatile anesthetics in stenting procedures

Myocardial ischemic damage is reduced by volatile anesthetics in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The authors tested the hypothesis that low-dose sevoflurane could decrease perioperative myocardial damage, as measured by cTnI release, when compared with placebo, in patients undergoing interventional cardiology procedures.

A single-blind, randomized controlled trial.

A university hospital.

Thirty patients undergoing stenting procedures (May 2005) were included in the present study.

The authors randomly assigned 16 patients to breathe sevoflurane (expired end-tidal concentration 1%) and 14 patients to breathe a placebo oxygen/air mix before stenting procedures.

Postprocedural cardiac troponin I release was measured as a marker of myocardial necrosis. Sixteen patients had detectable cardiac troponin I levels after stenting procedures, with no difference between groups: 10 in the sevoflurane group (16 patients) versus 6 in the placebo group (14 patients) (p = 0.3). No difference in the amount of postprocedural median (interquartile range) cardiac troponin I release was noted between the sevoflurane group, 0.15 (0-4.73) ng/mL, and the placebo group, 0.14 (0-0.87) ng/mL (p = 0.4).

Myocardial damage measured by cardiac troponin release was not reduced by the volatile anesthetic sevoflurane during interventional cardiology procedures in this study.