Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Pharmacy - Department of Pharmaceutics

Propofol is a general anaesthetic drug used in many types of surgeries for its favourable pharmacokinetic (PK) properties; lack of accumulation and rapid emergence of patients from anaesthesia. Many factors can independently affect propofol pharmacokinetics such as obesity, cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), hypoalbuminemia, hypothermia and critical illness. The incidence of obesity is tremendously increasing worldwide and more and more obese patients are expected to undergo cardiac surgeries adopting CPB. Yet, the available PK models that describe propofol pharmacokinetics during CPB did not investigate the influence of both obesity and CPB on propofol pharmacokinetics. Therefore, available PK models describing propofol pharmacokinetics in non-obese patients during CPB cannot be safely extrapolated to obese patients undergoing the same type of surgery. To investigate the influence of obesity on propofol pharmacokinetics during CPB, derive and evaluate a descriptive and predictive PK model to validate its use in obese and non-obese patients undergoing cardiac surgery adopting hypothermic CPB

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