Total intravenous anesthesia in oncological breast surgery

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. Every year millions of women are diagnosed with breast cancer and they need surgical treatment, for which total intravenous anesthesia seems to be an excellent option.

Objective: Describe the results of the application of total intravenous anesthesia in patients undergoing oncological breast surgery.

Methods: An observational, descriptive, longitudinal, prospective study was conducted in the Anesthesiology Service of "Abel Santamaría Cuadrado" Hospital in the period between January 2013 and January 2015. An accessible population of 111 patients selected using inclusion and exclusion criteria was studied. For the statistical analysis, frequency distributions, calculation of measures of central tendency and dispersion were used. Some of the variables were blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, complications, recovery time, level of sedation, analgesic response.

Results: High hemodynamic stability was achieved in more than 95% of the patients. Anesthetic superficiality was detected in 1.80% of cases. 92.80% of the cases recovered after 10 to 20 minutes. Adequate sedation was present in 106 patients. The main complications were nausea and vomiting in 9.01%. There was an adequate analgesic response in 93.69% of the cases.

Conclusions: The application of total intravenous anesthesia for oncological breast surgery yielded very satisfactory results as an anesthetic method.

Keywords: Oncological surgery; breast neoplasia; total intravenous anesthesia; continuous intravenous infusion.