Monitoring During Anesthesia

Jaime Gasco and Aristedes Koutrouvelis

Which agents affect the somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) and evoked potentials (EPs)?

Mostly the volatile inhalational anesthetics

How do you detect it?

By a decrease in amplitude and increased latency of the signals

How can you avoid the confounding effect they produce?

Record the baseline before surgery starts and communicate with the anesthesiologist if a change has been detected. It is important to have speech and neurological baseline.