Electroencephalographic markers of brain development during sevoflurane anaesthesia in children up to 3 years old.

BACKGROUND: General anaesthetics generate spatially defined brain oscillations in the EEG that relate fundamentally to neural-circuit architecture. Few studies detailing the neural-circuit activity of general anaesthesia in children have been described. The study aim was to identify age-related changes in EEG characteristics that mirror different stages of early human brain development during sevoflurane anaesthesia.

METHODS: Multichannel EEG recordings were performed in 91 children aged 0-3 yr undergoing elective surgery. We mapped spatial power and coherence over the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital cortices during maintenance anaesthesia.

RESULTS: During sevoflurane exposure: (i) slow-delta (0.1-4 Hz) oscillations were present in all ages, (ii) theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-12 Hz) oscillations emerge by ∼4 months, (iii) alpha oscillations increased in power from 4 to 10 months, (iv) frontal alpha-oscillation predominance emerged at ∼6 months, (v) frontal slow oscillations were coherent from birth until 6 months, and (vi) frontal alpha oscillations became coherent ∼10 months and persisted in older ages.

CONCLUSIONS: Key developmental milestones in the maturation of the thalamo-cortical circuitry likely generate changes in EEG patterns in infants undergoing sevoflurane general anaesthesia. Characterisation of anaesthesia-induced EEG oscillations in children demonstrates the importance of developing age-dependent strategies to monitor properly the brain states of children receiving general anaesthesia. These data have the potential to guide future studies investigating neurodevelopmental pathologies involving altered excitatory-inhibitory balance, such as epilepsy or Rett syndrome.