Fuzzy logic for auditory evoked response monitoring and control of depth of anaesthesia

This paper describes a self-organizing fuzzy model of patients undergoing surgery which was created from 10 clinical trials with off-line analysis during maintenance of anaesthesia using the drug propofol. The effects of patient sensitivity and surgical disturbances are also represented in this patient model. Hence, this model can be considered to be a qualitative pharmacologically related model for propofol during the anaesthetic maintenance stage. Furthermore, a closed-loop simulation has been designed to validate the patient model and compare the performance of a self-organizing fuzzy logic controller algorithm against a clinically derived linguistic controller. The successful results obtained provide proof-of-concept and encouragement to perform on-line clinical trials using fuzzy logic-based monitoring and control in operating theatre in the near future. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.