mudslide wrote:I apologize, folks -- I see that I didn't come back to the site to check for your responses. I'll check whether another drug besides Porpofol was used in the colonoscopy. Thanks for your replies.
You have to understand that Propofol activates the same pathways as Benzodiazepines and Barbiturates, do. And there is no evidence or research that suggests stimulating those pathways could lead to RLS symptoms.
Just because two events are linked timely (the usage of Propofol & RLS symptoms after you woke up) does not prove that Propofol was the cause for those symptoms.
Propofol is a very well understood, safe and easy to use narcotic when general anesthesia is necessary. If you would force the doctors to use an alternative because you are "allergic" to Propofol, they might be forced to use riskier narcotics or other narcotics in higher doses than normally given to reach the same level of anesthesia.
The most likely scenario to me is that you had some rebound RLS after the propofol and other narcotics were leaving the system after the procedure.
If you don't want to use Propofol in the future in case you have another procedure, I would at least mention the real reason and not just claim you are "allergic". Being allergic do a drug is something completely different.
And personally, I've had a stressful procedure of any kind, no matter what drugs are used, I would not be surprised to suffer some RLS symptoms when I wake up again because not moving and resting alone can trigger RLS symptoms down the road.
Also consider this: maybe Propofol was suppressing RLS symptoms you normally would have had when resting ... but of course, Propofol will stop working at some point while you are still in a resting position. And based on my experience, physical stress alone can cause RLS symptoms and general anesthesia alone is a massive stress for your body.
If it was me, I would have been surprised to not have any additional RLS symptoms in that situation while you seemed surprised you had symptoms in the first place.
So I wonder: was there some special about the RLS symptoms you experienced that day? What is your normal medication for RLS? There could have been side effects limiting the effects of your normal RLS medication or the general anesthesia accelerated the elimination of your normal RLS drugs or it was just some random event that you had additional RLS symptoms.
I hope this makes clear how difficult it can be to find one specific reason why you had RLS symptoms after general anesthesia. There is just so much that was going on that it is basically impossible to find one good reason for your symptoms. Only repeating the procedure several times in the same circumstances might reveal the reason for the additional RLS symptoms you were experiencing.