Emergence agitation after sevoflurane anaesthesia in children

摘要

Editor-We read with interest the article by Lee and colleagues comparing propofol and fentanyl for prevention of emergence agitation after sevoflurane anaesthesia in children. We thank the authors for their work in this very common and often very distressing scenario. We would like to raise a few important questions regarding this study. Pain is one of the important causes for emergence agitation particularly in children, and although the authors excluded the children in whom caudal analgesia had not worked, we think assessment of pain by appropriate scales would have been very helpful in addressing this confounding factor. Also considering the authors have used lidocaine for caudal analgesia and the patients had at least 60 min duration of anaesthesia and a further 40 min in Post Anaesthesia Care Unit (PACU), we consider assessment of pain in PACU would have been invaluable data in this study.