A prospective randomized study comparing recovery following anesthesia with a combination of intravenous dexmedetomidine and desflurane or sevoflurane in spinal surgeries

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Desflurane and sevoflurane are inhalational anesthetics which provide stable intraoperative hemodynamics and rapid emergence from anesthesia. Dexmedetomidine is an α2-agonist with sedative and hypnotic effects. We compared recovery following anesthesia with a combination of a continuous intravenous infusion of dexmedetomidine and desflurane or sevoflurane in cases of spine surgeries because no such data are available from India. MATERIAL AND METHODS: It was a single-blind, prospective, randomized study. After institutional ethics committee approval, patients were randomly allocated to one of the two groups of fifty patients each. Group D received desflurane and Group S received sevoflurane, along with dexmedetomidine 0.5 μg/kg/h IV infusion for maintenance of anesthesia. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Extubation time (ET) in Group D was shorter by 4.2 min than in Group S (10.1 ± 2.2 and 14.2 ± 1.3; P = 0.004). Postoperative recovery, postoperative analgesic, and antiemetic requirement between the groups were comparable The mean dial setting required to maintain the minimum alveolar concentration of 1 intraoperatively was 3.1 for desflurane and 0.7 for sevoflurane.