Anaesthesia: clinical aspects of the post-operative period

Keeping patients comfortable, calm and pain free during the post-operative period has always been an important consideration for clinicians. Alpha2-adrenoceptor agonists could provide an answer to this problem because they have several relevant physiological properties: causing sedation and analgesia, reducing blood pressure, heart rate and plasma catecholamine concentration, and preventing shivering via α2-adrenoceptors in the central nervous system. Alpha2-adrenoceptor agonists can also produce clinically appropriate sedation with rousability as well as analgesia. In addition, α2-adrenoceptor agonists do not cause clinically relevant respiratory depression. Moreover, they lower the incidence of tachycardia and hypertension, which are common in post-operative patients. Alpha2-adrenoceptor agonists thus have great potential to be ideal pharmaceutical agents for the management of patients during the post-operative period.