Sensors 2010, 10(12), 10896-10935; doi:10.3390/s101210896
Monitoring the Depth of Anaesthesia
1
Department of Systems and Control, Jožef Stefan Institute/Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
2
Institute of Pathophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana/Zaloška 4, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 September 2010 / Revised: 29 September 2010 / Accepted: 22 November 2010 / Published: 3 December 2010
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors in Biomechanics and Biomedicine)
Abstract
One of the current challenges in medicine is monitoring the patients’ depth of general anaesthesia (DGA). Accurate assessment of the depth of anaesthesia contributes to tailoring drug administration to the individual patient, thus preventing awareness or excessive anaesthetic depth and improving patients’ outcomes. In the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies on the development, comparison and validation of commercial devices that estimate the DGA by analyzing electrical activity of the brain (i.e., evoked potentials or brain waves). In this paper we review the most frequently used sensors and mathematical methods for monitoring the DGA, their validation in clinical practice and discuss the central question of whether these approaches can, compared to other conventional methods, reduce the risk of patient awareness during surgical procedures. View Full-TextKeywords:
consciousness; cognitive binding; general anaesthesia monitors; soft sensors; general anaesthesia
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MDPI and ACS Style
Musizza, B.; Ribaric, S. Monitoring the Depth of Anaesthesia. Sensors 2010, 10, 10896-10935.