Comparing Quality of Recovery Between Desflurane & Isoflurane in Eye Surgery Patients at Dr George Mukhari Acad Hospital

Recovery after surgery and anaesthesia has traditionally been assessed with objective measures including time to awakening, time to regaining airway reflexes, duration of stay in the recovery room and/or hospital, and incidence of adverse events like pain and post-operative nausea and vomiting. Increasingly, the patient's experience of their post-operative recovery is being recognised as an important outcome after surgery. The 15-Item Quality of Recovery score (QoR-15) has been validated to give a patient-centred global measure of overall health status after surgery and anaesthesia. This score has recently been translated and validated in isiZulu. Desflurane is the newest anaesthetic vapour to market, with many benefits from the anaesthetist's perspective: faster time to awakening, faster time to regaining airway reflexes, and a clearer sensorium post-operatively. However, there is a paucity of data evaluating whether this translates to better quality of recovery for the patient. Desflurane is more expensive than other volatiles; for economic use, it is recommended to use Desflurane with a low flow (up to 2L) anaesthetic technique. Isoflurane is the most commonly used volatile anaesthetic agent at Dr. George Mukhari Academic Hospital. Concerns about the increased cost of desflurane compared to isoflurane limits the use of this novel agent in the public sector in South Africa. Following an extensive literature review, no studies could be found comparing quality of recovery between desflurane and isoflurane using a validated quality of recovery tool like the QoR-15. The research question in this study is whether there is a clinically significant difference in post-operative quality of recovery (using the QoR-15 score) between desflurane and isoflurane inhalational anaesthesia in adult patients presenting for elective ophthalmological surgery under general anaesthesia. This study will therefore compare quality of recovery between desflurane and isoflurane inhalational anaesthesia. Furthermore, the study will evaluate the relative cost of using either volatile with a basal flow anaesthetic technique.