Use of Spectral Analysis of Electroencephalographic Activity to Guide Deep Sedoanalgesia and Its Effect on Propofol Consumption in Patients Hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit: a Pilot Study

Critically ill patients under mechanical ventilation (MV) have pain, anxiety, sleep deprivation and agitation. The use of analgesics and sedatives drugs (sedoanalgesia) is a common practice to produce pain relief and comfort during the VM. Despite its usefulness, it has been documented that the excessive use of sedatives is associated with an increased risk of prolonging the stay under MV and in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). To avoid this, current evidence suggests the use of protocols guided to clinical goals, such as the sedation-agitation scale (SAS), or daily suspension of infusions to avoid excess sedation. These protocols minimize the prescription of deep sedation, which is still necessary for 20-30% of patients.

Monitoring of sedation with electroencephalography in the ICU has been underutilized. In fact, only the use of indices that are generated from algorithms of the electroencephalographic signal processing has been reported. However, it has been shown that the use of these monitoring systems does not benefit the heterogeneous groups of patients in MV. Currently, the clinical monitors used to measure the effect of drugs used in a sedoanalgesia show in the screen the spectrogram of the brain electrical signal and quantify the frequency under which 95% of the electroencephalographic power is located, known as spectral edge frequency 95 (SEF95). This value in a person who is conscious is usually greater than 20 Hz, in a patient undergoing general anesthesia it is between 10 and 15 Hz. In preliminary measurements, in deeply sedated patients in the ICU, SEF95 values are under 5 Hz. This would indicate that patients in the ICU are being overdosed. It is unknown if in cases with an indication of deep sedation, the use of monitoring by spectrogram is superior to the standard management guided at clinical scales, such as SAS.

Therefore, the investigators propose the following hypothesis: In patients with an appropriate indication of deep sedation (SAS 1-2), the sedoanalgesia guided by the spectral edge frequency 95 reduces the consumption of propofol compared to the deep sedoanalgesia guided by the sedation scale agitation in MV patients in the ICU maintaining a clinically adequate level of sedation.