Does the pre-treatment with intravenous atropine or glycopyrrolate prevent, or ameliorate arrhythmias during halothane anaesthesia for adenotonsillectomy in children?

In this work, the effect of pretreatment with anticholinergic drugs on the incidence of cardiac arrhythmias during halothane anesthesia in children was studied. ASA I-II unpremedicated children undergoing adenotonsillectomy were randomly allocated in three groups. Intravenous atropine [0.02 mg/kg] was given in group I, glycopyrrolate [0.005 mg/kg] in group II and physiological saline was given in group III three minutes before induction of anesthesia. Children breath spontaneously with 60% N2O in oxygen, induction was done with thiopentone and succinylcholine, monitoring of ECG, blood pressure and oxygen saturation was done. Supraventricular tachycardia occurred in 80%, 40% and 30% of children in groups I, II and III, respectively. It was concluded that the use of anticholinergic drugs was not prevented, but it ameliorated the incidence of arrhythmias during halothane anesthesia in children and they induced supraventricular tachycardia, especially atropine, but bradycardia was common in group III and was treated with atropine 0.2 mg/kg

Four-arm radial open maze (FAROM) as a tool for assessing the effect of atropine in spatial memory of the rats.

Place learning behaviour for working (short term) memory and reference (long term) memory is studied with the Four-arm radial open maze (FAROM) in 18 rats divided equally in three groups. In group I, 0.5 mg of atropine was injected intra-peritoneally 30 minutes before the trial. In group II, saline and in group III Glycopyrrolate were injected instead. Twenty three hours hungry animals were tested on each day in the maze to search for food kept in one of the eight cul-de-sacs of maze. The latency i.e. the time to reach the goal cul-de-sacs, as well as the error score i.e. the number of entries in the non-goal cul-de-sacs were counted during six consecutive trials, per day. Each trial duration was 5 minutes or the time taken by the animal to search the goal compartment whichever was less. The inter-trials period was 10 min and the work was carried out for a period of 3 weeks. The results show that atropine does block effectively both the memory faculties i.e. working and reference memory and that level of memory deficit induced by atropine is related to the rate of drug uptake by the central cholinergic receptors.

Efectos sobre la frecuencia cardíaca y presión arterial de la mezcla neostigmine con atropina o glycopyrrolato en la reversión del bloqueo neuromuscular / Efects on the heart rate and arterial pressure of the combination of neostigmine with atropine or glycopyrolate in the reversion of the neuromuscular block

Se estudiaron dos grupos de pacientes, uno con la mezcla neostigmine-atropina (2.5 mg y 1 mg respectivamente) y un segundo grupo con la mezcla de neostigmine-glycopyrrolato (2.5 mg y 0.5 mg respectivamente) utilizadas ambas mezclas para revertir el efecto relajante no despolarizante. No se observó una diferencia estadísticamente significativa en la presión arterial sistémica. En cambio hubo un aumento de un 10% en la frecuencia cardíaca lo que se produjo al minuto de la inyección de atropina y luego una disminución de la misma hasta descender a valores del 16% por debajo de la cifra promedio control. En cambio, en el grupo de glycopyrrolato en ningún momento hubo aumento de la frecuencia cardíaca, la que se mantuvo siempre cercana a un 10% por debajo del valor control hasta el 3§ minuto, descendiendo luego hasta el 10§ minuto en un 25% por debajo del valor control comenzando luego a ascender. La caída de la frecuencia cardíaca observada en el grupo glycopyrrolato, fue estadísticamente significativa entre los minutos 2 y minutos 15 (P < 0,05). En cambio dicha reducción de la frecuencia cardíaca sólo fue estadísticamente significativa en el minuto 15 (P < 0.02) para el grupo atropina. En pacientes en quienes existe una alteración en el balance entre la oferta y la demanda de oxígeno al miocardio, es recomendable el uso de la mezcla glycopyrrolato-neostigmine por el menor efecto taquicardizante del glycopyrrolato