Meta-analysis of desflurane and propofol average times and variability in times to extubation and following commands

Purpose We performed a meta-analysis to compare the operating room recovery time of desflurane with that of propofol. Methods Studies were included in which a) humans were assigned randomly to propofol or desflurane groups without other differences between groups (e.g., induction drugs) and b) mean and standard deviation were reported for extubation time and/or time to follow commands. Since there was heterogeneity of variance between treatment groups in the log-scale (i.e., unequal coefficients of variation of observations in the time scale), generalized pivotal methods for the lognormal distribution were used as inputs of the random effects meta-analyses. Results Desflurane reduced the variability (i.e., standard deviation) in time to extubation by 26% relative to propofol (95% confidence interval [CI], 6% to 42%; P = 0.006) and reduced the variability in time to follow commands by 39% (95% CI, 25% to 51%; P