Does The Choice of Muscle Relaxants Really Affect Postoperative Recovery Time?

Abstract

In Response: In our article [1], we reported the mean and standard error of the mean for length of surgery and recovery time. Although the re-ported mean length of surgery using long-acting muscle relaxants was longer than that using short- and intermediate-acting muscle relaxants, there was actually considerable overlap between the two groups, with the short- and intermediate-acting muscle relaxants ranging from 45 to 780 min, and the long-acting muscle relaxants ranging from 73 to 820 min. For the sake of simplicity, we chose not to include details of all the regression models we explored. We presented linear models comparing the recovery time associated with the two muscle relaxant groups, controlling for different confounders. By plotting the length of surgery and recovery time on a logarithmic scale, we could have misled readers about our choice of regression model. However, there was a strong linear relationship between the length of recovery time and the length of surgery (r = 0.31 with P < 0.001). The issues of problems with extrapolation mentioned by Bronheim et al. are not relevant to our data and analyses because we did not extrapolate. Jane C. Ballantyne, FRCA YuChiao Chang, PhD Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care; Massachusetts General Hospital; Boston, MA 02114