Anesthesiology
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Many studies have shown that patients may remember words learned during apparently adequate anesthesia. Performance on memory tests may be influenced by explicit and implicit memory. We used the process dissociation procedure to estimate implicit and explicit memory for words presented during sedation or anesthesia. ⋯ There was no unprompted recall of surgery, but the process dissociation procedure showed memory for words presented during surgery. This memory was apparently explicit but did not correlate with the measures of depth of anesthesia used.
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Hypovolemia decreases the dose requirement for anesthetics, but no data are available for propofol. As it is impossible to study this in patients, a rat model was used in which the influence of hypovolemia on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of propofol was investigated. ⋯ An increased hypnotic effect of propofol occurs during hypovolemia in the rat and can be attributed to changes in both pharmacokinetics and end organ sensitivity.