Effect of Remifentanil on Cough During Emergence From General Anesthesia : Randomized Trial to Comparison Between Sevoflurane Anesthesia and Propofol Anesthesia

During recovery from general anesthesia the stimuli of endotracheal tube lead to the coughing, hypertension, tachycardia, which can cause a serious complication.

It has been demonstrated that opioid, intravenous or topical lidocaine administration can attenuate the coughing reflex.

Administered the opioid before emergence, it is effective to prevent cough reflex but the recovery is delayed, it was difficult to predict emergence.

However, remifentanil is an opioid widely used because of rapid context-sensitive half-life, target-controled infusion method to adequately maintain the effect site concentration could help to predict the recovery time to the alert state from the general anesthesia. It is considered proper method of continuous infusion of remifentanil for reducing emergence cough.

Recent reporters suggest that antitussive effect of remifentanil differs depend on main anesthetic agents, the incidence of coughing when tracheal extubation is reduced after propofol anesthesia compared with sevoflurane anesthesia.