Conscious sedation, an anesthesia procedure where patients remain awake but do not feel pain, is a safe and effective alternative to general anesthesia for transcatheter aortic valve replacement patients, according to a study in PLOS ONE.
Researchers at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center examined records of 196 adult patients who underwent TAVR, between August 2012 and June 2016.
The study shows that patients who underwent conscious sedation had a similar rate of adverse events compared to general anesthesia.
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Conscious sedation patients had shorter stays in the intensive care unit — 30 hours compared to 96 for general anesthesia patients. The conscious sedation group experience hospital stays of .9 days versus 10.4 days among general anesthesia patients.
Additionally, direct costs for conscious sedation patients was 28 percent lower than their general anesthesia counterparts.