The Ability of Bispectral-Guided Management Compared to Routine Monitoring for Reflecting Awareness Rate in Patients Undergoing Abdominal Surgery

Awareness during general anesthesia in different types of surgery is an important described adverse event. Bispectral (BIS) monitoring is one of the recent techniques proposed to monitor the depth of anesthesia. The present study tested the hypothesis that the awareness rate and changes in hemodynamic parameters within anesthesia would be lower in patients allocated to BIS-guided management than those allocated to routine monitoring. In total, 333 adult patients with the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status I-III, aged between 18 and 65 years scheduled for elective abdominal surgery under general anesthesia were included in this randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial. Patients were randomly allocated to BIS monitoring (n = 163) or routine monitoring (n = 170). BIS values and hemodynamic parameters including systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate (HR), and SPO2 were marked before induction (control value), after intubation and laryngoscopy, at intubation, after incision, and also during the operation every 15 minutes until extubation. The overall incidence of awareness in the BIS and routine monitoring groups were 5.5% and 4.1%, which was not significantly different. There were no significant differences in hemodynamic indices including SBP, DBP, HR, and SPO2 before induction of anesthesia between the two groups. These between-group differences in the studied indices remained insignificant at different time points after anesthesia induction as well as post ICU hospitalization. Furthermore, the trend of changes in hemodynamic parameters was comparable in the two groups. BIS-guided management may not be superior to routine monitoring protocols to prevent awareness as well as hemodynamic changes during general anesthesia in patients undergoing abdominal surgeries.