Dexmedetomidine infusion as a supplement to isoflurane anaesthesia for vitreoretinal surgery.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Dexmedetomidine.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 60 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

In this double-blind, randomized, controlled trial approved by the Hospital Ethics Committee, 60 patients undergoing elective vitreoretinal surgery were allocated to two groups, receiving either placebo or dexmedetomidine.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Dexmedetomidine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Dexmedetomidine, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Dexmedetomidine could be set against what happens without it.

Anaesthesia was maintained with isoflurane, oxygen, and air mixture.

The mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) during loading, induction, maintenance, extubation, and recovery period were measured.

The degree of strain on extubation was graded from 0 to 5.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adjuvants, Anesthesia, Adrenergic alpha-Agonists, Anesthesia Recovery Period, Anesthetics, Inhalation, Blood Pressure, Device Removal and Dexmedetomidine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Dexmedetomidine in 60 patients.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2007 (British journal of anaesthesia), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.