An Anesthesia Display for a Space Station: Clinical Validation of Sedation and Analgesia Models

Real-time visualizations of drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics may help anesthesiologists more accurately titrate intravenous anesthetics for sedation and analgesia in a critical care setting. To assess synergism between propofol and opioids, our laboratory has developed response surface pharmacodynamic interaction models for remifentanil and propofol. These models use surrogate measures of analgesia and sedation from a volunteer study but must be validated before they are applied to patients in a real-time display; the surrogate measures used in the volunteer study must be related to clinical patient responses. The aim of this study is to explore the pharmacodynamic relationship between the surrogate and clinical responses. We hypothesize that the surrogate stimuli from the volunteer study can be mapped to surgical stimuli; we expect the levels of anesthesia required to moderate responses to the surrogate measures relate to levels of sedation and analgesia needed to prevent responses to surgical stimuli in the operating room