Perseus A500 enables faster recovery from desflurane general anesthesia

The Dräger Perseus A500 (Perseus) anesthetic workstation has been designed with a lower internal volume. We evaluated the recovery time following general anesthesia using the Perseus workstation compared with that using the conventional Dräger Fabius Plus workstation.

Following approval by our institutional research ethics committee, 50 patients receiving elective surgery under general anesthesia were enrolled in the study. Written informed consent was obtained from each patient. The patients were divided into the Perseus group and a control group. The Perseus anesthesia workstation was used for the Perseus group, and the Fabius Plus was used for the control group. General anesthesia was maintained with a 4.2% end-tidal concentration of desflurane, remifentanil, fentanyl, and regional anesthesia. After the surgical procedure, the administration of desflurane was discontinued. The inspiratory and expiratory desflurane concentration, time taken for patients to open their eyes, and the time taken to extubate the trachea after discontinuation of anesthetics were recorded.

The inspiratory and expiratory desflurane concentration after the administration of desflurane was discontinued was lower in the Perseus group. Moreover, the time taken for patients to open their eyes was statistically significantly quicker in the Perseus group when compared with the control group: 284 ± 60 vs 325 ± 43 s, respectively. The time taken for extubation was also statistically significantly quicker in the Perseus group when compared with the control group: 350 ± 67 vs 388 ± 62 s, respectively.

We demonstrate in this study that Perseus enables the faster wash-out of anesthetics and faster recovery of patients after general anesthesia.