Characterization of agitation episodes during the emergence from general anesthesia in Pediatrics

Abstract

Introduction: agitation during the emergence from general anesthesia is a frequent complication in Pediatrics that can cause physical damages, delay discharge and increase costs.

Objectives: to characterize the episodes of general anesthesia in the pediatric patient.

Materials and methods: a descriptive, prospective, longitudinal study was carried out with 246 patients who presented general anesthesia in the Hospital “Eliseo Noel Caamaño” from September 2015 to December 2018. The studied variables were age, gender, ASA, surgical time, anesthetic time, kind of surgery, anesthetic method, agents used for the induction and maintenance, episodes severity and treatment necessity.  

Results: most of patients treated with general anesthesia were aged 2-6 years (63.4 %), male (67.9 %), ASA I (78.1 %), and underwent the removal of soft parts lesions (27.6 %). The average surgical time was 31,2 ± 10,4 minutes and the  anesthetics one was 43,5±8,8 minutes.  The most used anesthetics method was balanced anesthesia (84.2 %), the most used inductor was propofol (86.2 %) and for the maintenance isoflurane (34,1%) and sevoflurane (26,4%). Severe episodes (51,2%) predominated, and 56.9 % needed pharmacologic intervention.

Conclusions: this kind of anesthesia is more frequently used in children aged less than 6 years, male, healthy, who underwent short procedures with balanced anesthesia and the use of propofol for the induction and isoflurane and sevoflurane for maintaining it.  Severe episodes predominated, and most of them required pharmacologic treatment.