One important goal in anesthetic management during ocular surgery is to provide adequate control of intraocular pressure (IOP). An increase in IOP may be catastrophic in patients with glaucoma or a penetrating open-eye injury. There is an ongoing debate over the effect of anesthetic agents on the IOP. Anesthetic regimens in this surgical field commonly consist of short-acting anesthetic agents, such as propofol and sevoflurane, usually combined with short-acting
analgesics, such as remifentanil. Both propofol and sevoflurane are known to reduce the IOP. Previous studies have compared these two
anesthetics protocols in order to determine which provides superior control of the IOP. Propofol produced significantly lower IOP measurements compared to sevoflurane (both combined with remifentanil), in cataract surgery, whereas in non-ophthalmic surgery propofol and sevoflurane caused a comparable decrease in IOP. Sevoflurane, an inhalational anesthetic, has a rapid onset of action faster recovery time ...