Effect of Remimazolam and Sevoflurane Anesthesia on Recovery in Pediatric Patients

• The most commonly used anesthetic for general anesthesia in pediatric patients is sevoflurane, an inhalation anesthetic. It has the advantage of being able to induce anesthesia without securing an intravenous route and causing less irritation to the airway. However, the incidence of emergence agitation after sevoflurane anesthesia in pediatric patients is high, with reports of up to 67%. Emergence agitation can cause physical damage to the patient, workload in the recovery room, and dissatisfaction of the caregiver.
• Remimazolam (Byfavo Inj., Hana Pharm Col, Ltd., Seoul, Korea) is a benzodiazepine drug used for inducing and maintaining general anesthesia and for sedation during procedures. When remimazolam is used as a general anesthetic, it has the advantage of being metabolized quickly by enzymes in the liver compared to propofol, has a short context-sensitive half-life of 7.5 minutes, and can be reversed with flumazenil. Therefore, during general anesthesia using remimazolam, the time it takes from the end of anesthesia until the patient wakes up is predictable. According to a study by Yang X et al., administering a small amount of remimazolam (0.2 mg/kg) intravenously at the end of general anesthesia using sevoflurane reduced the incidence of emergence agitation.
• However, very few studies have evaluated the use of remimazolam in general anesthesia in pediatric patients and its effect on endotracheal extubation time after anesthesia in operating room, emergence agitation, pain, and discharge time in the postanesthesia care unit (PACU).

Inclusion criteria

• Patients aged between 3 and 18 years old who underwent ophthalmic surgery under general anesthesia
• When anesthesia was induced and maintained with remimazolam, or anesthesia was induced with propofol and maintained with sevoflurane.

Exclusion criteria

• none