Lingering effects of versed for peds?

Specialties PACU

Published

I work out patient surgery so were talking minor surgical procedures on basically healthy pediatric patients.

For the sake of argument we will be magical nurses and KNOW the child is not in pain or having other medical issues in PACU.

Some nurses blame versed given in pre-op or OR if the pediatric patient is cranky, crying, inconsolable, acting out, in recovery. We do let parents back as soon as possible, this can happen even with parents there. The nurses think versed makes the child feel more disoriented, out of it "yucky". They hint to anesthesia that they don't like pediatric patients to get versed.

It is not automatically given to every pediatric patient, depends on the child, the case, etc.

Any thoughts?

Specializes in Anesthesia.

There are lots of reasons for emergence delirium, if there was one drug that we could easily eliminate emergence delirium we would have stopped using it years ago. http://www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/104/1/84.full

Here is good article discussing the various reasons for emergence delirium.

Specializes in CTICU.

some times i take a bit of heat for quickly sedating patients waking up wild.. they seem to wake up mid dream, mid reccollection of some wretched memory and need to go back to sleep and wake up in a happier memory....but it has not ever failed me in 18 years.....and is a tecnique used often...

I do the same thing. I quickly sedate them with a small amount of fentanyl once they are waking up. They go back to sleep and when the wake up its a world of a difference.

Specializes in ER/PACU.

Interesting thread. As with adults kids act differently. We had 2- 4year old kids have Tymp and tubes both had same anesthesiologist and given same agents. 1 woke up and went home in an hour the other we had for 4 hours because he was wild and inconsolable by parents staff. In adults when we have a "wild" wake up our anesthesia routinely give them versed to go back to sleep and they usually wake up totally fine the 2nd time. We however didn't do that with the children in the same situation. Would be a good study.

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