Propofol is an effective sedative, largely applied in anesthesia and in general it is associated to opioids for analgesia in major surgeries, like the cardiac surgery to coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with or without cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). It is administered by a target controlled infusion system (TCI) to maintain the optimal depth of sedation and anesthesia during the intervention, due to its pharmacokinetic characteristics. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of CPB in pharmacokinetics and in pharmacodynamics of propofol, applying PK-PD modeling. For drug administration, Diprifusor (AstraZeneca), including pump plus software must enter individual data as body weight from the patient, once pharmacokinetic parameters were included previously. To validate this system of infusion, the prediction error by target controlled infusion must be estimated by comparison between obtained and predict concentration plasma ratio. In the present protocol, 20 patients (10 CONTROL and 10 CPB) were selected based on inclusion criteria for the comparative study. Patients were informed in details about the investigation and before the protocol starts, they signed the informed written consent to participate of the study. Protocol was approved by the local ethical committees of all institutions involved. Rate of infusion and the range of obtained plasma propofol concentrations required to reach 2 µg/mL and to maintain the bispectral index (BIS:40) during cardiac surgery were monitored. Subsequently, at the end of surgery, both rate of infusion and range of obtained plasma propofol concentrations required to reach 1 µg/mL were monitored either. Depth of sedation was assessed with BIS during all period reaching maximum effect in 40 at level of sedation in the operative period. At the end of surgery, the Ramsay score achieved sedation level 6, when the target plasma propofol was adjusted to 1 µg/mL; Additionally, at the end of infusion in the postoperative period, BIS and Ramsay were monitored simultaneously up to 18-20 hours for all patients. Blood samples were collected and propofol plasma levels were monitored during (TCI : 2 µg/mL) and after surgery (TCI: 1 µg/mL). Blood samples also were collected at the end of infusion for pharmacokinetics. Volumes of blood lower than 90 mL were necessary for drug monitoring and pharmacokinetic purposes. Plasma levels were determined by a quite simple, selective, sensitive and robustness analytical method HPLC, using fluorescence detector, C18 column, and binary system at low flow rate.

Confidence limits were:

0.1-10 µg/mL (linearity, r2 0.9977), 0.05 µg/mL(LD), 0.1 flg/mL(LQ), 93.9% (absolute recovery), 8.4 and 8.8% (intra and inter day precision), 91.8 and 93.3% (accuracy intra and inter day). Additionally, good stability was shown for the drug and its internal standard (tymol). Plasma levels showed a large fluctuation for the CONTROL compared to CPB in the perioperative period, mainly during the surgical intervention, indicating a higher predicting error for CONTROL group. Pharmacokinetics applying three compartment open model showed significant increases on drug elimination (ClT, β, γ) for CPB compared to CONTROL, once plasma levels for CPB Group were lower than CONTROL in the period of study.