Sedation by infusion: a clinical trial in cardiac surgery patients.

The problem of sedation and analgesia for ventilator-dependent patients was examined in this study. Twenty subjects undergoing elective coronary revascularization surgery at a major medical center were studied. They ranged in age from 49 to 83 years. A randomized, prospective research design was used to place subjects in either an experimental group or a control group. Standard postoperative analgesia with intravenous increments of morphine and midazolam in the control group was compared to treatment with a titratable sufentanil-midazolam infusion in the experimental group. In both groups, hemodynamic variables were measured at selected intervals, sodium nitroprusside consumption was measured, and time to extubation was noted. Data analysis demonstrated no statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups. The more costly sedative-analgesic infusion appeared to be comparable to conventional treatment with incremental morphine and midazolam based on the results of this study.