Anesthesiology News - Drug Trials Fail To Ease Postoperative Delirium

Drug Trials Fail To Ease Postoperative Delirium

by Trevor Stokes

Postoperative delirium affects as many as two-thirds of patients over age 65 and increases in-hospital mortality and health care costs. All of which makes the failure of researchers to find a treatment for the complication so frustrating.

Such is the fate of two recent efforts that showed promise in pilot studies but failed to pan out in subsequent Phase III clinical trials. Both trials involved already approved agents for common neurologic conditions.

In one trial, reported at Euroanaesthesia 2012 (7AP4-10), Alan Chaput, MD, an anesthesiology faculty member at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and his colleagues conducted a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study to see if the anticonvulsive pregabalin (Lyrica, Pfizer) could alleviate delirium in postoperative patients.

The antidelirium effect from gabapentin was originally identified in a small pilot trial by Jaqueline Leung, MD, MPH, professor of anesthesia and perioperative care at the University of California, San Francisco of 21 patients (Neurology 2006;67:1251-1253). Dr. Chaput decided to follow up with a Phase III clinical trial.

Clinical Anesthesiology - ISSUE: NOVEMBER 2012 | VOLUME: 38:11

Leia o artigo completo no link abaixo:

Anesthesiology News - Drug Trials Fail To Ease Postoperative Delirium