In Rats Breathing from a Nonrebreathing System, Substitution of Desflurane for Isoflurane Toward the End of Anesthesia Incompletely Restores the Time of Recovery Toward That of Desflurane

UNLABELLED: The lower solubility of desflurane allows a more rapid emergence from anesthesia than after anesthesia with the more soluble but less expensive anesthetic, isoflurane. Some practitioners use isoflurane for maintenance of anesthesia, crossing over to desflurane later in maintenance in an attempt to combine the cost-effectiveness of isoflurane with the rapid emergence from desflurane. We hypothesized that this maneuver would not accomplish its goals. Twenty-four male Sprague-Dawley rats received 1.2 minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration (MAC) of desflurane for the final 15, 30, or 60 min of a 2-h, 1.2-MAC isoflurane anesthetic in a nonrebreathing anesthesia system. We measured the time from cessation of anesthetic administration to the time each rat righted himself twice. Immediately after righting for the second time, we tested each rat's ability to remain atop a rotating rod (Rota-Rod) for 60 s continuously. Early (righting reflex) and late (Rota-Rod) recovery occurred more rapidly (P < 0.001) after 120 min of anesthesia with desflurane alone than after 120 min of anesthesia with isoflurane alone. A cross-over period of 30 min or longer produced a righting reflex time that did not differ from that found with desflurane alone, but a 15-min cross-over did not. Progressively longer cross-over periods led to proportionally better Rota-Rod performance, but no cross-over duration produced the rapidity of recovery seen with desflurane alone. We concluded that in a nonrebreathing system, switching to desflurane during the last 30 min of anesthesia substantially improved early recovery but produced a much smaller improvement in later recovery. IMPLICATIONS: The newer inhaled anesthetics offer the advantage of lower solubility, and thus more rapid emergence from anesthesia, than do the older inhaled anesthetics. However, they can be more expensive to use. This study demonstrates that substituting the newer anesthetic, desflurane, toward the end of anesthesia for an older anesthetic of greater solubility, isoflurane, does not produce recovery comparable to that of desflurane alone. Furthermore, this technique can be more costly than using desflurane throughout anesthesia.