Should we use psychostimulant drugs to boost the emergence from general anesthesia?

摘要

Recently, Chemali et al. showed that psychostimulants can accelerate the emergence from propofol anesthesia as evidenced by a faster recovery of the righting reflex and by signs of electroencephalogram activation after the injection of methylphenidate during propofol infusion. The authors believe that methylphenidate can be safely used in a clinical setting to facilitate the awakening from prolonged propofol anesthesia or in patients overly sedated by propofol. In our view, the use of psychostimulants such as methylphenidate as emergence drugs may lead to undesirable consequences, especially in the abovementioned subsets of patients.