A Crossover Comparison of the Sensitivity and the Specificity between BIS and AEP in Predicting Unconsciousness in General Anesthesia

Background. There is an increasing concern of awareness and recall during general anesthesia for both the patient and the anesthetist. The bispectral index (BIS) is used to assess the level of sedation and depth of anesthesia and detect consciousness in different anesthetic drugs. Middle-latency auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) also quantify action of anesthetic drugs and detect the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness. We aim to compare the sensitivity and specificity between BIS and AEP in predicting unconsciousness in inhalational sevoflurane anesthesia and intravenous propofol anesthesia. Methods. Totally, 40 patients were randomly allocated into two groups: propofol or sevoflurane group. In the propofol group, anesthesia was induced with target-controlled infusion propofol. In the sevoflurane group, anesthesia was induced by increasing concentrations of sevoflurane. There were 3 end points during induction: sedation, unconsciousness, and anesthesia. Target and effect-site concentrations of propofol, end-tidal concentration of sevoflurane, and BIS and AEP were recorded at each stage. Results. We obtained good EC50 with both monitors, at which there is a 50% chance that the patient has reached the end point, but the index variation was affected by the anesthetic technique. Propofol had higher correlations with stage of anesthesia, BIS, and AEP than sevoflurane. BIS had higher correlations with depth of anesthesia than AEP, but we did not find an anesthetic depth monitor that had high sensitivity and specificity and is not affected by the anesthetic technique. Conclusions. The prediction powers of BIS and AEP do not seem as good as some papers mentioned.