Abstract

The pharmacokinetics of propofol has been evaluated extensively in a variety of patients groups after either bolus doses or continuous infusions. Presently there are multiple models available based on western data including China. So far, the pharmacokinetics of propofol has not been studied in the Indian population. With this background we planned to evaluate pharmacokinetics of propofol in Indian patients which will help in better management of these patients undergoing surgery using propofol infusion in total intravenous anesthesia. Venous blood samples (3 ml) for estimation of propofol concentrations were taken at different time intervals. Plasma propofol concentration was estimated by using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method. Maximum performance error occurred at 2 min with a median of -3.85 and it varied from -1.7 to -9.5 showing a consistent over prediction of the concentration at two minutes after the loading dose and start of infusion. Subsequently the error decreased to median of -0.9 (-0.9 to 4.6) at 10 minutes and median of -0.3 (range-0.3 to 2.8) at 30 and in 60 min -1.55(-0.28 to 1). When we compare the performance of our pharmacokinetic model of propofol in this study with other western studies, we observed less error with our pharmacokinetic model.

Key words: Propofol, pharmacokinetics, median performance error (MDPE), median absolute performance error (MDAPE).