Joao Lemos
Professor
Systems, Decision and Control
Instituto Superior Tecnico
Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
Anesthesia of patients subject to general surgery comprises three components, each one induced by a specific drug in order to drive the patient to an adequate physiological state: Neuromuscular blockade (NMB), that corresponds to muscle paralysis and prevents involuntary movements, hypnosis, that places the patient in a state of self-unconsciousness, and analgesia, that relieves the patient from the stress associated to noxious stimuli (“pain”). The seminar will address the design of controllers for automatic drug administration that concern the first two components (NMB and hypnosis). Since the major issue when controlling these type of systems is major inter- and intra-patient variability, the seminar will address modelling and control issues that are able to tackle this issue. Regarding modelling, the Fokker-Planck equation will be used to relate parameter uncertainty with the time response. Regarding control, both adaptive (based on multiple models) and robust controllers will be described. The algorithms will be illustrated using actual clinical results.
