Dexmedetomidine Infusion After C-Section May Reduce Postpartum Depression

Women with prenatal depression who received an infusion of the sedative dexmedetomidine shortly after a cesarean delivery (C-section) had lower incidences of postpartum depression at one and six weeks postpartum compared with women who received a saline infusion after delivery. Thesefindings were published inJAMA Network Open. The study was funded by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province.Yingyong Zhou, Ph.D., of the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University and colleagues conducted the study at two hospitals in China from March 2022 to April 2023. Women 18 years or older with prenatal depression (defined as higher than 9 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, or EPDS) who underwent elective cesarean delivery and required postoperative patient-controlled intravenous analgesia were recruited for the trial. The researchers randomized 338 women (average age 31.5 years) to the dexmedetomidine group (n  = 169) or the control group (n = 169).After delivery, study participants in the dexmedetomidine group received 0.5 μg/kg of dexmedetomidine in 20 mL of 0.9% saline for 10 minutes. Those in the control group received 20 mL of 0.9% saline for 10 minutes. Following this infusion, women in the study were administered one of two infusions of the narcotic sufentanil, which were set for continuous infusion at a rate o f 2 mL/h for 48 hours: The dexmedetomidine group received dexmedetomidine (2.0 μg/kg) + sufentanil (2.2 μg/kg); the control g...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: C-section cesarean delivery dexmedetomidine Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale intravenous JAMA Network Open postpartum depression prenatal depression Source Type: research