Agitation when sedation lowered

[sbiggs96]

Hello all,

On new years my Dad experienced a cardiac arrest and has been in ICU since. Over the last 3 weeks he has made progress with blood pressure, oxygen levels etc and is now on a tracheotomy. The barrier that we seem to face at the moment is when they lower the sedation my Dad will get very agitated particularly in the evenings and the sedation will have to be turned back up. When he is on a low level of sedation and we see him in the day he is obviously very confused and can respond to basic commands occasionally, but seems very calm. In the evenings he gets restless which I hand means they turn the sedation up and it feels like a never ending cycle ! It’s been 3 days but feels as though we are sideways stepping.

Is this a normal thing to happen ? And what other ways around this could doctors take to lower the sedation and keep him calm ?

thank you for your support in advance,

Simon

[Kittycardigan]

When my mom was having agitation, they gave her some antipsychotic for that rather than turning back up her sedation. She had a small bout of delirium recovering from her surgery, and that did seem to help a lot! I'm in the US, so I don't know what the protocols are where you're at...perhaps catching a doctor and asking what other options there are for the agitation might yield some results.

[Sepsur]

delirium is experienced by 80% of critical care patients, it’s severity is a multitude of factors out of our control, age being one of them. It is known that making sure someone has their glasses or hearing aids can help, having their favourite radio station, scent, aftershave & familiar voices can help reorientate too.

It often gets worse at night - a phenomenon called ‘sun downing’.

Once sedation is removed, a person gets some sleep and proper nutrition & hydration - many symptoms evaporate -

royalpapworth.nhs.uk/our-ho...