Since its introduction in clinical use more than ten years ago, propofol is well appreciated for sedation and supplemental hypnosis in anaesthesia. However the substance is approved only for anaesthesia in children elder than three years. As can be substantiated by many data reported in literature, there are no pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic reasons whatsoever to withhold propofol from the younger children; this applies both to the use as a narcotic supplement and as a short term hypnotic for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.
Intramuscular injections are still part of routine care in the treatment of children. Vaccines, premedications and analgesics are administered by this route. The pain associated with an intramuscular injection is severe, the risk of complications is increased, and pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics are unpredictable. In many cases, equivalent alternatives of rectal, oral or intranasal routes of administering pharmacologic agents exist. Intramuscular injection of analgesics and premedications to children are-except in case of emergencies-obsolete. This demand corresponds to the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP).
Unless systemic changes are induced, regional intestinal perfusion deficits cannot be detected with a PCO(2) measurement in the gastric lumen. In pigs, an occlusion of blood flow to an isolated gut segment resulted in a significant increase in intraperitoneal CO(2) tension. Thus, the measurement of intraperitoneal PCO(2) could allow the early detection of regional intestinal ischemia.
This regime of sedation for children undergoing Magnetic Resonance Imaging is safe and suitable independent of age: there is a good control of vital functions, a minimum of side effects and a fine recovery characteristic with short times of emergence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.