Intelligent fuzzy control of muscle relaxation during surgery

We have investigated the clinical application of self-learning fuzzy logic control to the intravenous administration of muscle relaxant infusions during surgery. Patient responses to muscle relaxants are complex, showing strong non-linearity with uncertain gain and time-varying characteristics. In addition, new muscle relaxants are short-acting, encouraging the use of continuous infusions rather than intermittent boluses, the usual means of manually administering muscle relaxants. This has increased the difficulty in manually maintaining good surgical operating conditions with muscle relaxants, prompting our research into the application of intelligent control schemes to overcome this difficult control problem