RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impacts of general and spinal anesthesia on short-term cognitive function and mental status in elderly patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery. STUDY DESIGN: An experimental study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Department of Anesthetics, the Central People's Hospital of Tengzhou City, Shandong Province, China, from December 2016 to December 2017. METHODOLOGY: A total of 80 elderly patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery were selected and randomly divided into the observation group and the control group, 40 cases in each group. The observation group underwent spinal anesthesia, and the control group underwent general anaesthesia. Eye opening time, language presentation time etc.in the two groups were compared. RESULTS: The eye opening time and language presentation time in observation group were all lower than those in control group (both p<0.001). At 1, 3 and 6 hours after surgery, the mini-mental state examination (MMSE) scores and the amplitudes of the P300 wave of observation group were all higher than those of the control group (all p<0.001), the latencies of the P300 wave in observation group were all lower than control group (all p<0.001). At 24h after surgery, the number of cases suffering postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) in the observation group was lower than that of the control group (p=0.039). CONCLUSION: Compared with general anaesthesia, spinal anesthesia can effectively shorten the eye opening time and language presentation time in elderly patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery. It also has few impacts on the short-term cognitive function and mental status of such patients, with lower incidence of POCD.