A technique first tested on bees is being trialled on New Zealand surgical patients, and preliminary results suggest it reduces the jet-lag caused by anaesthetic, Associate Prof Guy Warman will tell a medical conference in Auckland today.
Prof Warman, of the department of anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland, said the patients were exposed to blue light during surgery in an attempt to shift their circadian clock.
Getting rid of the jet-lag caused by anaesthesia helps patients sleep better after surgery, improving wound healing and helping the immune system.
Conducted at Auckland Hospital, the trial is funded by the United States Office of Naval Research.
‘‘[The US naval research office is] interested in the idea of disrupted sleep rhythms, and how sleep rhythms might be improved.''
A placebo group is exposed to a type of light whose wavelength does not shift the circadian clock.
The patients are fitted with special goggles exposing them to blue light or the placebo light during their surgery.
Early unpublished results show the patients exposed to the blue light were better able to resume their usual sleep patterns.
‘‘It looks like sleep is less disrupted in the patients that are receiving the light that shifts their circadian clock, but we've got 20 patients to go [out of 40].''
Kidney donor patients were chosen because they did not have underlying health conditions that could interfere with sleep. It was hoped the technique could help all surgical patients.
It helped that kidney donor operations were performed in the morning.
‘‘The reason for that is that they need to have a kidney out to transplant into someone else, so you always have your operation at 8am in the morning, which is brilliant for us.''
Bees were used for the earlier research because of their ‘‘astonishing'' sense of time.
Their time sense was affected by anaesthesia. But researchers found the bees' time perception recovered when they were exposed to circadian-shifting light as well as anaesthetic.
Prof Warman is speaking at the Australia and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists annual conference.
