Melatonin is useful alternative for sedation in children undergoing auditory brainstem responses testing

Melatonin for anaesthetic indications in paediatric patients: a systematic review

“…Hajjij et al. reported successful ABR testing in 206 (83%) children who received pre‐test melatonin with or without sleep deprivation [44]. The mean time to sleep was 32 min, resulting in continuous sleep in 156 (76%) children.…”

“…Five studies included melatonin with concomitant sleep deprivation, all for ABR testing [40–44]. Johnson et al.…”

“…Seventeen studies reporting the use of melatonin for diagnostic sedation before auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were identified [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Seven studies were strictly observational without other intervention.…”

“…A quantitative synthesis of the published findings was not indicated due to substantial heterogeneity in research objective, patient population, methodology and outcomes measured. The identified publications have therefore been categorised by the following indications for melatonin: analgesia (Table 1) [31,32]; diagnostic sedation (Table 2) [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]; or anaesthetic adjunct (Table 3) [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57].…”

“…studies included melatonin with concomitant sleep deprivation, all for ABR testing[40][41][42][43][44].Johnson et al investigated the use of melatonin as an alternative to general anaesthesia in 40 children before MRI examination[40]. All patients received 10 mg melatonin 30 min before the procedure, 17 (43%) of whom also underwent sleep deprivation (loss of ≥ 3 h sleep within the 18 h before MRI).Twenty-six children (65%) slept during the examination, and 22 (55%) had a successful MRI examination (diagnostic quality images on four separate sequences).…”