Montreal, Quebec, CAN. Researchers performed the world’s first totally automated administration of an anesthetic. Nicknamed “McSleepy,” the new system administers drugs for general anesthesia and monitors their separate effects completely automatically, with no manual intervention. The anesthetic technique was used on a patient who underwent a partial nephrectomy, a procedure that removes a kidney tumor while leaving the non-cancerous part of the kidney intact, over a period of three hours and 30 minutes.

 

The work was done at McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). "We have been working on closed-loop systems, where drugs are administered, their effects continuously monitored, and the doses are adjusted accordingly, for the last five years,” said Dr. Thomas M. Hemmerling of McGill’s Department of Anesthesia and the Montreal General Hospital, who heads ITAG (the Intelligent Technology in Anesthesia research group), a team of anesthesiologists, biomedical scientists and engineers.

 

Hemmerling says to “Think of “McSleepy” as a sort of humanoid anesthesiologist that thinks like an anesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behavior, even recognizing monitoring malfunction."

 

During the the partial nephrectomy, McSleepy manipulated the various components of general anesthesia. The automated system measured three separate parameters displayed on a new Integrated monitor of anesthesia (IMATM):

All of the parameters were developed by ITAG. The system then administered the appropriate drugs using conventional infusion pumps, controlled by a laptop computer on which “McSleepy” is installed.

 

In designing “McSleepy”, Hemmerling says they "put in considerable research on the design of an interface which is clear, easy to read, resembles displays of our everyday practice but still provides a detailed clinical picture of what is going on and what has happened.” An additional feature is that the system can communicate with personal digital assistants (PDAs), making distant monitoring and anesthetic control possible. In addition, this technology can be easily incorporated into modern medical teaching programs such as simulation centers and web-based learning platforms.

 

Dr. Hemmerling hopes that a commercial system might be available within the next five years.

 

 

 

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