Role of flupirtine in reducing preoperative anxiety of patients undergoing brain tumor surgery- A prospective double blind study

Abstract

Preoperative anxiety is unpleasant sensation, due to parasympathetic, sympathetic and, endocrine stimuli, is often unspecific and unknown to the person and known to cause hemodynamic instability. It can also leads to various intraoperative and postoperative complications which are difficult to manage thus it must be considered one of the important factor to treat preoperatively. Flupirtine acts as antagonism of N-methyl-d-aspartate antagonism and stimulate neuronal kv7 channels causing analgesic action, better tolerability, preservation of respiratory functions, antiepileptic properties. Due to limited study of flupirtine as anxiolytic we conducted study to evaluate role of flupirtine in patients undergoing brain tumor surgeries. This study was done in 100 patients who were undergoing brain tumor surgery. All patients were randomly assigned in to two groups. One group received flupirtine 100 mg and other group received placebo. Before drug administration and 2 hours after drug regimen level of preoperative anxiety was noted in term of VAS score. Unpaired t-test was used for various aspects of two groups and paired t-test was used for within group comparison.Compare to baseline, Reduction of VAS was seen in both groups. But reduction was significantly more in flupirtine group compare to placebo group without any side effects. Flupirtine is useful drug as anxiolytic in patients undergoing brain tumor surgery.