Comparison of BIS and AAI as measures of anaesthetic drug effect during desflurane-remifentanil anaesthesia

BACKGROUND: Autoregressive modelling with exogenous input of the middle-latency auditory evoked potential has been developed for monitoring of anaesthetic depth. This study was designed to investigate the dose-response relationship between endtidal desflurane concentrations and the Alaris Autoregressive Index (AAI, Alaris Medical, Hampshire, UK, version 1.4) or the bispectral index (Aspect Medical Systems, Newton, MA, USA, version XP). METHODS: Twenty-one patients scheduled for radical prostatectomy were investigated. After premedication and induction of anaesthesia with propofol und remifentanil all patients received atracurium and a remifentanil background infusion at a constant rate of 0.1 micro g kg(-1) min(-1). During dissection of the prostate, desflurane endtidal concentrations were varied between 3 and 9 vol%. Both AAI and BIS were determined and compared with the respective endtidal desflurane concentration. RESULTS: None of the patients showed a significant change of AAI values while changing the desflurane concentrations between 3 and 9 vol%. The dose-response of BIS values and desflurane concentrations was not uniform: two patients showed increasing BIS values with increasing desflurane concentrations, while in three patients BIS values remained unchanged. In 16 patients decreasing BIS values adequately reflected an increase in desflurane concentrations. CONCLUSION: Changes of desflurane concentrations during deep anaesthesia were adequately displayed only in 16 of 21 cases by BIS but in none of the cases by AAI monitoring.