Diazepam-pentazocine anaesthesia for cardiovascular surgery.

IN CARDIOVASCULAR ANAESTHESIA in recent years, two techniques, fentanyl and droperidol "Neuroleptanaesthesia," and one using morphine as the primary agent, have shared popularity. 1-8 Knowledge of the undesirable side effects associated with these techniques, led us to postulate that another tranquillizer-analgesic combination might have some advantages and fewer side-effects. A review of the pharmacological studies pertaining to analgesics and tranquillizers revealed that pentazocine (dimethylallyl-phenazocine) has minimal cardiovascular depression. T M Pentazocine is a potent analgesic which is not a narcotic. It was therefore selected as the analgesic for this study. A pilot study was carried out, using pentazocine in a large dose as the analgesic, and droperidol or diazepam as the tranquillizer. A study of 42 surgical cases, ten of which were open heart operations, showed that diazepam was the better of the two tranquillizers. In this paper, we present an initial series of 320 unselected open-heart operations with cardiopulmonary bypass, anaesthetized by using primarily the combination of diazepam with pentazocine. The data obtained was used as the basis for the evaluation of this combination.