factors contributing to postanesthetic emergence agitation in pediatric anaesthesia

abstract emergence agitation that has been first described by eckenhoff et al. in 1960’s is a dissociated state of consciousness in which the child is inconsolable, irritable, uncooperative, typically thrashing, crying, moaning or incoherent. it is also a common problem in pediatric postanesthetic care unit with an incidence ranging from 10 to 80%. this literature review focused on presence of emergence agitation and contributing factors in children under general anaesthesia. it was conducted on medline in pubmed area, alta vista data bases, cinhal and google scholar in january 2013 for publications written in english with the following keywords: “emergence agitation, etiology, treatment, pediatric anaesthesia, postanesthetic care unit, children, inhaled anesthetics, intravenous anesthetics and post anesthetic emergence delirium”. in this paper, we intend to review the factors contributing postanesthetic emergence agitation in children to improve our vision in this area.