A controller for automatic regulation of induced paralysis during surgery.

This paper presents a strategy for automatic control of induced paralysis using vecuronium bromide during surgery. The controller is self-tuning and adapts to inter-patient and intra-patient response variations while optimizing the output variance and infusion rate. In particular, the controller is capable of accommodating the variations of pure time delays in patient response. The performance of the controller is evaluated using an experimentally derived pharmacokinetic and nonlinear pharmacodynamic model of patient response. The results indicate that the controller provides robust regulation of the paralysis level with no output offset.