propofol infusion syndrome

This the latest warning from medwatch on propofol and the syndrome.
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2007/feb07.htm. There have been many more cases of this than reported mainly due to ignorance and the lack of warning from astra zenica. This has been known since 1992 .Norway was the first to recognize it.

Here is new source I found.It identifies the syndrome very well.
http://pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/anesb/f...7000-00009.htm

In my opinion the benefits of this drug outweigh the risks in many cases. Some of this research is pretty poor in my opinion. You could potentially pick this to death if you had to. One study metions that to date there are only 14 known cases of it, another lists some very broad symptoms that could be associated with many, many other conditions and another study even lists this as being very rare. I do agree that it definately has renal risks and increased risk of infection. We see rhabdo a lot with it when ran at higher rates for over 48 hours. Our facility monitors labs for this and makes an attempt to switch to our "sedation protocol" to minimize its use. Our sedation protocol involves fentanyl drips, versed drips, ativan, morphine and about anything else we need.

HI
I am an ICU nurse educator in Sydney Australia - we had one such case several years ago and since then we cap our propofol infusions @ a max of 20ml/hr - we only use it for short term sedation - generally use midazolam for longer term if not contraindicated. Propofol is great in small doses for agitated neurotrauma pts due to its short half life so easy to wake them up to assess them....