The stimulating effect of Ritalin could someday be used to jolt surgical patients out of an anesthesia-induced slumber and put them into a fully alert condition within minutes. The drug of choice for distracted kids and adults has shown it also can awaken lab rats from their anesthesia-induced slumber by delivering "a shot of adrenaline to the brain," according to neuroscientists.
If Ritalin's "uppers" effect applies to humans just as well as rats, it would give patients a clear head immediately after surgery so that they could make post-operation decisions. A quicker turnaround in the operating room could also translate into huge savings for the U.S. health care system, said Emery Brown, an MIT neuroscientist and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has been researching the drug.
Brown also wants to see if the same Ritalin effect could help bring patients out of comas, but he has yet to explore that line of research.
"If I can give you a drug which is safe and it helps your brain restore its function after general anesthesia, let's assume that's a good thing," Brown said. "If, in addition, it means that you're able to leave the operating room sooner, then that means the operating-room flow can be just that much more efficient."
One hour of time in the operating room at Massachusetts General Hospital costs anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500. Shaving off just the 10 minutes required for each surgical patient to awaken could quickly add up over the 30,000 operations done at the hospital each year.
No drug is used to bring people out of anesthesia. Instead, surgical patients wake up on their own over five or 10 minutes and often feel groggy for an hour or two. That's where Ritalin could help, by awakening areas of the brain required for attention and decision making, according to a new study by Brown and fellow researchers.
The study showed how rats that received Ritalin injections revived in an average of 90 seconds, compared to the 280 seconds it took for rats that did not get Ritalin.
Such a development represents a "significant finding" because of the " need for drugs that reverse anesthesia," said Zheng Xie, assistant professor of anesthesia at the University of Chicago. Xie did not take part in the study.
Researchers couldn't ask their lab rats how they felt after getting jolted awake, but humans may find out for themselves soon enough. Brown and his colleagues are pushing for a clinical trial, and hope the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will move quickly to grant the new Ritalin use as opposed to considering a brand-new drug.
The study appeared in the Sept. 20 issue of the journal Anesthesiology.
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