Propofol for pediatric radiotherapy.
OBJECTIVE
Pediatric radiotherapy is a day care procedure. In children, anaesthesia is necessary to prevent movement during the therapy. Traditionally intramuscular ketamine is used for these procedure because of its inherent safety in a child who used to be left alone in the cobalt room.


METHODS
This study was designed to explore the efficacy of propofol and ketamine in pediatric radiotherapy in nineteen children. The inclusion criteria was a child fasting for six hours with no fever or URTI in the past week. A child coming to the radiotherapy (RT) unit without an intravenous cannula was given intramuscular ketamine 10 mg/kg and taken for the procedure. Before the child recovered from anaesthesia an intravenous cannula, 20-22G, Vasofix was inserted for subsequent sittings of RT. The child coming with an intravenous cannula was given propofol 2.5 mg/kg with xylocaine (0.1 mg/kg) without adrenaline. The parameters recorded were pulse rate, oxygen saturation and respiratory rate-baseline to every 30 seconds till five minutes. Onset time, recovery time, oral feeding time and any untoward effects like nausea, vomiting, nystagmus were also noted.


RESULTS
The drug was graded on a scale of 0-10 according to parental acceptability where 0 is the worst and 10 is the best acceptability. The mean (+/-SD) of all the measured parameters were calculated and compared between the two groups.


CONCLUSIONS
Propofol was associated with faster onset, better recovery, early oral feeding time, no nausea and vomiting and better parental acceptability. There was no hypotension, bradycardia and oxygen saturation at 60 seconds, which was between 94-95%, was easily treatable with supplementation of oxygen by face mask.
Unit of Anesthesiology, Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi. jyotsna_punj@yahoo.com
Jyotsna
J
Punj
Sushma
S
Bhatnagar
Abha
A
Saxena
Seema
S
Mishra
T R
TR
Kannan
Manas
M
Panigrahi
Vipin
V
Pandey
D000778:Anesthetics, Dissociative / Q000008:administration & dosage; D018686:Anesthetics, Intravenous / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007649:Ketamine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D015742:Propofol / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
D000778:Anesthetics, Dissociative; D018686:Anesthetics, Intravenous; D007649:Ketamine; D015742:Propofol