A technical review of the history, development and performance of the anaesthetic conserving device “AnaConDa” for delivering volatile anaesthetic in intensive and post-operative critical care

There is a shift in critical care to adopt volatile anaesthetics as sedatives for certain patients using mechanical ventilation. Accompanying this shift is a growing body of literature describing the advantages or disadvantages of using isoflurane or sevoflurane for long term sedation. This practise requires a cost effective, efficient and safe means to deliver these drugs that can simultaneously operate with modern critical care ventilators and ventilation protocols while protecting the care environment and care workers from excessive exposure to the drugs. The anaesthetic conserving device (“AnaConDa”, Sedana Medical) is one device that delivers a safe sedative dose of either isoflurane or sevoflurane to a patient using existing critical care ventilators, common syringe pumps and gas monitors. The device is essentially a small disposable anaesthetic vaporizer and HME filter combined into one airway component. Similar to an HME filter, the device reflects moisture back to the patient, but also reflects 90% of the anaesthetic by adsorbing and releasing the drug using a proprietary carbon filament reflecting medium. This reflection reduces the total amount of anaesthetic needed, reducing that which is exhausted or scavenged upon exhalation. It can be used for 24 h of sedation, and fits into current critical care ventilator circuits almost without modifications. This article will describe the physical characteristics of the device, how it works, its development history and the performance parameters under which it can be used.