Increasing Intraoperative Patient Safety: Monitoring Drug Concentrations

Monitors that show intravenous drug and effect concentrations currently do not exist. However, using real-time displays of intravenous anesthetic concentrations and effects could significantly enhance intraoperative clinical decision-making and patient safety. Pharmacological models are available to estimate drug concentrations in the brain, and to predict the drug's associated physiological effects. An interdisciplinary research team developed a graphic display incorporating these models to show the predicted present and future concentrations and effects of anesthetic drugs in real-time. The results of this study show that anesthesiologists using the display controlled hemodynamic patient variables better than a control group. Additionally, when using the drug display the procedure was shorter than in the control group. Taken together, the availability of a drug display has the potential to increase patient safety significantly.