Onset time for pharmacologic premedication with clonidine as a nasal aerosol: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial
Paediatric Anaesthesia, 05/18/2012
Clinical Article
Larsson P et al. – Clonidine administered as nasal aerosol was not found to achieve adequate preoperative sedation within 30min of administration. Despite its sedative properties, no prolongation of postoperative sedation was noted compared with placebo.
Methods- Premedication is common in the pediatric population, but the optimal agent and administration route is still a matter of debate.
- Clonidine has many beneficial effects in the perioperative period.
- Clonidine nasal drops produce a similar sedative effect as after oral administration but do not reduce the onset time.
- Nasal aerosol administration of drugs is generally more effective than drops and an option to decrease the onset time of clonidine.
- Pediatric ASA status 1 and 2 patients were randomized to receive placebo (P), clonidine 3–4µgkg-1 (C4), or clonidine 7–8µgkg-1 (C7) as a nasal aerosol.
- Acceptance of administration, pre- and postoperative sedation, and adverse events were assessed.
- A total of 60 patients were enrolled with a median age of 3.5years (range 0.7–6.9) and median weight of 14.8kg (range 10–25).
- In the C7 group, 55% of the children were found adequately sedated at 30min as compared to 32% in the C4 group (P=0.1202).
- At 45min, adequate sedation was seen in 65% of the patients in both C4 and C7 groups, which were both found to be significantly higher compared with the placebo control group (14%) (P-values=0.0027 and 0.0013, respectively).
- The postoperative sedation profile did not differ between the three study groups.
