Author(s)

Takeshi Yokoyama, Eiji Sakamoto, Fumiyasu Yamasaki, Koichi Yamashita, Tomoaki Yatabe, Kunio Suwa

Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Kochi Med- ical School Hospital, Nankoku, Japan.
Department of Clinical La- boratory, Kochi Medical School Hospital, Nankoku, Japan.
Department of Dental Anesthesiology, Faculty of Dental Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Teikyo Junior College, Tokyo, Japan.

With a small-dose remifentanil, some patients showed no reaction and did not remember it postoperatively. We, therefore, hypothesized that remifentanil may decrease the level of consciousness and/or exhibit amnesic effect when stimulations are avoided. Thirty-patients were divided into two groups: non-stimulation group and stimulation group. Anesthesia was induced with 1 micro-g·kg^?1·min^?1 of remifentanil using no additional hypnotic agent. In the non-stimulation group, patients were left free from any stimulation except non-invasive blood pressure monitoring. In the stimulation group, patients were asked to follow verbal commands. The level of consciousness was evaluated with electroencephalogram and BIS-value derived from it. In the non-stimulation group, all patients reached the decreased level of consciousness in 5 minutes. In the stimulation group, however, 14 patients were judged to be still conscious. 10 patients could open their mouth at the 5th minute, but 9 of these 10 patients did not remember it postoperatively. In conclusion, remifentanil, with no additional anesthetics, exhibited hypnotic and amnesic effects when stimulations were kept minimal.

Remifentanil; Hypnotic potential; Stimulation; Amnesia

T. Yokoyama, E. Sakamoto, F. Yamasaki, K. Yamashita, T. Yatabe and K. Suwa, "Remifentanil Has Sufficient Hypnotic and Amnesic Effect for Induction of Anesthesia by Itself," Open Journal of Anesthesiology, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2014, pp. 8-12. doi: 10.4236/ojanes.2014.41002.