The Effects of Intravenous Anesthetics and Inhaled Anesthetics on Patients' Postoperative Sleep

Overview

Adequate sleep is necessary for physical and mental health of human being. Although surgery and anesthesia techniques have improved in resent years, postoperative sleep disturbance remains a challenging problem in surgical procedures1. Postoperative sleep fragmentation and poor sleep quality can not only result in hyperalgesia and a delay in postoperative recovery2, lack of sleep after surgery can also bring many potential adverse effects such as cognitive disorders (such as delusions, delirium), chronic pain, mood disorders, metabolic disorders, and pro-inflammatory changes3-5. Previous studies have reported that age, preoperative comorbidity and severity of surgical trauma were independent factors that associated with postoperative sleep disturbance6,7. Our prior studies have also found that patients are more likely to experience decreased sleep quality after receiving general anesthesia, which was characterized by a decrease in each sleep stage8. Propofol and sevoflurane are commonly used general anesthetics in clinical practice. The choice of anesthetic may also affect the cognitive outcome after surgery, but the results of clinical studies have always been contradictory. Some studies report that the cognitive results after inhalation are worse than those after intravenous anesthesia. And the incidence of dreaming was significantly higher in the sevoflurane anesthesia group compared to the propofol group9-11. Another study conduct among infants proved that compared with propofol-remifentanil, sevoflurane appears to be associated with less sleep disturbances in the first weeks after surgery12. Based on these conflicts, the aim of the current study was to compare the effect of propofol vs sevoflurane on early postoperative sleep quality and complications of patients receiving laparoscopic surgery after general anesthesia.