Abstract
Objective: Chloral Hydrate is the most commonly used sedative
for Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) test.
The aim of this study was to
retrospectively analyze the safety and effectiveness of Chloral Hydrate
in patients undergoing ABR tests through a single-center and large
sample size cross-sectional study.
Methods: Data were collected from December 2015 to March 2022,
which included 7,176 ABR tests (6,106 patients). Basic information was
collected, then telephone follow-up was conducted for patients with two
or more consecutive tests less than 60 days, and administration method,
failure performance, and adverse events were collected. Total sedation
failure rate, sedation failure rates in different age groups (≤0.5
years, 0.5-3 years, 3-12 years, ≥12 years) and incidence of adverse
events were calculated.
Results: A total of 4,967(69.21%) ABR tests were younger than
3 years of age. The sedation failure rate was 3.11% with a Chloral
Hydrate dose of 30 mg/kg, which ranged from 1.44% to 4.31% in
different age groups. In the sedation failure tests, insufficient
sedation was found in 74.44% of the tests. The incidence of adverse
events was 0.35%, with most commonly vomiting.
Conclusion: The sedation failure rate and the incidence of
adverse events in this study are relatively low compared with other
previous studies, and Chloral Hydrate can be considered a safe and
effective sedative with the permissible dose. However, there were still
many patients who failed to complete the test due to insufficient
sedation (mostly infants and children), which imply that alternative
sedatives with easier preparation process are needed.
Key words: Chloral Hydrate; Auditory brainstem response;
Sedation; Failure rate