Design and clinical evaluation of robust PID control of propofol anesthesia in children

This paper describes the design of a robust PID controller for propofol infusion in children and presents the results of clinical evaluation of this closed-loop system during endoscopic investigations in children age 6y-17y. The controller design is based on a set of models that describes the inter- patient variability in the response to propofol infusion in the study population. The PID controller is tuned to achieve sufficient robustness margins for the identified uncertainty. 108 children were enrolled in the study, anesthesia was closed-loop controlled in 102 of these cases. Clinical evaluation of the system shows that closed-loop control of both induction and maintenance of anesthesia in children based on the WAVCNS index as a measure of clinical effect is feasible. A robustly tuned PID controller can accommodate the inter-patient variability in children and spontaneous breathing can be maintained in most subjects.