Anesthetic neurotoxicity in infants with repetitive exposure is a risk factors for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Dexmedetomidine exposure is thought to have neuroprotective effects. We tested the hypothesis that intraoperative volatile anesthetic exposure is predictive of aberrant brain connectivity in the post-operative period in CHD infants, relative to dexmedetomidine exposure using DTI and BOLD imaging. Using both hypothesis driven and data driven approaches, as well as graph analysis we showed that Increased volatile anesthetic exposure in the intraoperative period is associated with reduced post-operative frontal brain connectivity in CHD infants, while DEX exposure was associated with metrics of improved brain connectivity.
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