Objective: To investigate the effects of sevoflurane combined with propofol continuous anaesthesia on anaesthesia and postoperative analgesia and recovery in elderly patients undergoing lower limb fracture surgery.Methods: In this study, 344 elderly patients who underwent surgical treatment for lower limb fractures in our hospital between June 2020 and May 2022 were enrolled for prospective analysis, and the patients were equally divided into a control group and an experimental group by the random number table method, with 172 patients in each group.In the control group, continuous anaesthesia with propofol was used, while in the experimental group, continuous anaesthesia with sevoflurane and propofol was used. The anesthetic effect, postoperative analgesic effect, recovery effect and adverse reactions of the patients in the two groups were compared.Results: The excellent anesthesia rate in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (P<0.05); VAS scores at T1, T2, T3 and T4 were significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group (P>0.05); Time to awaken, time to extubation and time to leave the anesthesia recovery room were all significantly lower in the experimental group than in the control group (P<0.05); The difference in the incidence of postoperative adverse reactions between the two groups was not statistically significant (P>0.05).Conclusion: Sevoflurane combined with propofol continuous anaesthesia is ideal for anaesthesia in elderly patients undergoing lower limb fracture surgery. This protocol is effective in suppressing postoperative pain and facilitating recovery from anaesthesia and does not increase the risk of postoperative adverse effects in patients.

A wide variety of substances have been used to anaesthetise invertebrates, but many are not anaesthetics and merely incapacitate animals, rather than preventing pain. Much is now known about the mode of action of modern clinical and veterinary anaesthetics because of their use on human beings and other vertebrates. In essence, the role of an ideal general anaesthetic is to act as a muscle relaxant, an analgesic, an anaesthetic and an amnesic. To achieve all these properties with a single substance is difficult and various adjuvants usually need to be administered, resulting in a cocktail of drugs. In a clinical setting, the vast majority of patients are unaware of surgery being carried out and have no memory of it, so they can claim to have felt no pain, but this is much more difficult to demonstrate in invertebrates. Here we show that 1% MgCl2, a muscle relaxant, is a useful adjuvant for the clinical anaesthetic isoflurane on Octopus vulgaris when applied for 10 minutes before the clinical anaesthetic. After this, full anaesthesia can be achieved in 5 minutes using only 1% isoflurane and from which full recovery takes place rapidly in about 10 to 15 minutes. This reduces stress on the animal and minimises the quantity of anaesthetic used.

The use of pain relief during castration and dehorning of calves on commercial beef operations can be limited by constraints associated with the delivery of analgesic agents. As topical anaesthetic (TA) and buccal meloxicam (MEL) are now available in Australia, offering practical analgesic treatments for concurrent castration and dehorning of beef calves, a study was conducted to determine their efficacy in providing pain relief when applied alone or in combination. Weaner calves were randomly allocated to; (1) no castration and dehorning / positive control (CONP); (2) castration and dehorning / negative control (CONN); (3) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam (BM); (4) castration and dehorning with topical anaesthetic (TA); and (5) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam and topical anaesthetic (BMTA). Weight gain, paddock utilisation, lying activity and behaviour following treatment were measured. CONP and BMTA calves had significantly greater weight gain than CONN calves (P < 0.001). CONN calves spent less time lying compared to BMTA calves on all days (P < 0.001). All dehorned and castrated calves spent more time walking (P = 0.024) and less time eating (P < 0.001) compared to CONP calves. There was a trend for CONP calves to spend the most time standing and CONN calves to spend the least time standing (P = 0.059). There were also trends for the frequency of head turns to be lowest in CONP and BMTA calves (P = 0.098) and tail flicks to be highest in CONN and BM calves (P = 0.061). The findings of this study suggest that TA and MEL can improve welfare and production of calves following surgical castration and amputation dehorning.