Comparing Quality of Recovery Between Desflurane & Isoflurane in Eye Surgery Patients at Dr George Mukhari Acad Hospital
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2021-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Recovery after surgery and anaesthesia has traditionally been assessed with objective
measures including time to awakening, time to regaining airway reflexes, duration of stay in
the recovery room and/or hospital, and incidence of adverse events like pain and
post-operative nausea and vomiting.
Increasingly, the patient's experience of their post-operative recovery is being recognised
as an important outcome after surgery. The 15-Item Quality of Recovery score (QoR-15) has
been validated to give a patient-centred global measure of overall health status after
surgery and anaesthesia. This score has recently been translated and validated in isiZulu.
Desflurane is the newest anaesthetic vapour to market, with many benefits from the
anaesthetist's perspective: faster time to awakening, faster time to regaining airway
reflexes, and a clearer sensorium post-operatively. However, there is a paucity of data
evaluating whether this translates to better quality of recovery for the patient. Desflurane
is more expensive than other volatiles; for economic use, it is recommended to use Desflurane
with a low flow (up to 2L) anaesthetic technique.
Isoflurane is the most commonly used volatile anaesthetic agent at Dr. George Mukhari
Academic Hospital. Concerns about the increased cost of desflurane compared to isoflurane
limits the use of this novel agent in the public sector in South Africa. Following an
extensive literature review, no studies could be found comparing quality of recovery between
desflurane and isoflurane using a validated quality of recovery tool like the QoR-15.
The research question in this study is whether there is a clinically significant difference
in post-operative quality of recovery (using the QoR-15 score) between desflurane and
isoflurane inhalational anaesthesia in adult patients presenting for elective
ophthalmological surgery under general anaesthesia.
This study will therefore compare quality of recovery between desflurane and isoflurane
inhalational anaesthesia. Furthermore, the study will evaluate the relative cost of using
either volatile with a basal flow anaesthetic technique.