Anesthesia Practitioners' Goals for Sevoflurane Minimum Alveolar Concentration at the End of Surgery and the Incidence of Prolonged Extubations: A Prospective and Observational Study.

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Prolonged times to tracheal extubation (≥15 minutes from dressing on the patient) are consequential based on their clinical and economic effect. We evaluated the variability among anesthesia practitioners in their goals for the age-adjusted end-tidal minimum alveolar concentration ofsevoflurane (MAC) at surgery end and achievement of their goals. We prospectively studied a cohort of 56 adult patients undergoing general anesthesia with sevoflurane as the sole anesthetic agent, scheduled operating room time of at least 3 hours, and non-prone positioning. At the start of surgical closure, an observer asked the anesthesia practitioner their goal for MAC when the surgical drapes are lowered (i.e., the functional end of surgery for the studied procedures). When the drapes were lowered, the MAC achieved was recorded, and the values were compared. The standard deviation of the practitioners' MAC goal was large, 0.199 (N = 56 cases, 95% confidence interval 0.17-0.24), not significantly different from the standard deviation of the MAC achieved of0.253, P= 0.071. The MAC goal and MAC achieved were correlated pairwise, Pearson r=0.65, P< 0.0001. There was no incremental effect of operating room conversation(s) related tocase progress on the association (partial correlation ‑0.01, P= 0.96). Differences among practitioners in the MAC achieved at surgery end were consequential. Specifically, for the N = 12cases with prolonged extubation, the mean MAC was 0.60 (standard deviation 0.10) versus 0.48 (0.21) among the N = 44 cases without prolonged extubation (P = 0.0070). The standard deviation ofthe MAC goal among practitioners was sufficiently large to contribute significantly tothe variability in the MAC achieved at the end of surgery. We confirmed prospectively that the age-adjusted end-tidal MAC at the end of surgery matters clinically and economically because differences of0.60 versus 0.48 were associated with more prolonged extubations. Our novel finding isthat the MAC achieved ≥0.60 werecaused in part by the anesthesia practitioners' stated MAC goals when surgical closures started.