Effects of cardiopulmonary bypass on sufentanil pharmacokinetics in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery

Abstract

Background: Complete pharmacokinetic modeling, including assessment of the effect of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) on sufentanil disposition, has not been reported. The aims of this investigation were to define a model that accurately predicted sufentanil concentrations during and after cardiac surgery and to determine if CPB had a clinically significant impact on sufentanil pharmacokinetics.

Methods: Population pharmacokinetic modeling was applied to data from 21 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. The predictive ability of models was assessed by calculating bias, accuracy, and measured:predicted concentration ratios versus time. A simple three-compartment model, without covariates, was initially compared with models having weight or gender as covariates and was subsequently used as the foundation for multiple CPB-adjusted models (allowing step-changes of parameters at the start or end of CPB). The primary criterion for choosing more complex models was a significant improvement in log-likelihood; secondary criteria were significant improvement in bias or accuracy.

Results: Neither covariate (weight or gender) models improved bias or accuracy compared with the simple three-compartment model. A final CPB-adjusted model with V2 and Cl3 changing at the start of CPB and V1, Cl2, and Cl3 changing at the end of CPB had significantly greater log-likelihood values when compared with the simple three-compartment model and with less elaborate CPB-adjusted models. However, bias and accuracy for this final model were not significantly different from the simple three-compartment model.

Conclusions: When sufentanil is infused at a constant rate, with initiation of CPB, a pharmacokinetic model adjusted for CPB predicts that the sufentanil concentration will decrease approximately 17% and that it will begin to return to the prebypass concentration 12 min after initiation of CPB. At the end of CPB, this model also predicts a brief spike of the sufentanil concentration. These predictions reflect changes in the measured sufentanil concentrations. However, compared with a simple, three-compartment model, incorporating step-changes of pharmacokinetic parameters at the start or end of cardiopulmonary bypass (or both) did not significantly improve overall perioperative prediction of measured sufentanil concentrations. This suggests that CPB has clinically insignificant effects on sufentanil kinetics in adults.