Ritalin Clear Effects of Anesthesia Faster

A team of experts in the United States says that giving patients who are awakening from general anesthesia the drug Ritalin can boost the recovery process. People come to a lot faster, and also display less grogginess, confusion and nausea.

Ritalin's main ingredient is the psychostimulant substance methylphenidate, which is currently one of the most popular drugs among physicians. It can be used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, but is also prescribed for obesity, depression and lethargy.

According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) neuroscientist Emery Brown, who is also an anesthesiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), administering Ritalin to people who are just coming out of general anesthesia eliminates many of the unpleasant side-effects the procedure has.

Disorientation is one of the most common effects of anesthesia, and patients who are just waking up spend a lot of time figuring out where they are, while trying to remember what happened to them. Usually, it takes several hours for an adult person to fully recover.

Details of the effects methylphenidate has were published in the September 20 online issue of the esteemed medical journal Anesthesiology. The work was conducted on unsuspecting lab rats. When given Ritalin, they surged out of anesthesia-induced grogginess almost immediately.

“It’s like giving a shot of adrenaline to the brain,” Brown explains. He holds an appointment as a professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (DHST) Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

MIT experts Ken Solt, Joseph Cotten, Aylin Cimenser, Kevin Wong and Jessica Chemali were the coauthors of the new paper. The team believes that this approach to reverting from full anesthesia could benefit humans as well, allowing them to get better within minutes, rather than hours.

At this time, anesthesiologists cut off drug supplies to patients once a surgery is finished. For about 10 minutes afterwards, the expert waits for the person on the table to begin breathing by themselves. Once this happens, the person is left to come to whenever they feel like it.

“Our thought is you should try to do things to clear up your head as quickly as possible. The objective should be the return, as soon as possible, to the level at which the patient was before the operation,” Brown explains.

“If I can give you a drug which is safe and it helps your brain restore its function after general anesthesia, let’s assume that’s a good thing. If, in addition, it means that you’re able to leave the operating room sooner, then that means the operating room flow can be just that much more efficient,” he concludes.