Anesthesiology Research

Dr. Brusseau is currently involved in research investigating techniques of selective fetal anesthesia and analgesia for in utero fetal interventions, a field of enquiry with very little historical or contemporaneous activity. Specifically, using a sheep model, he is looking at intraamniotic instillation of anesthetic medications and whether significant fetal levels of said medications may be achieved with minimal maternal levels. Dr. Brusseau has demonstrated that this is indeed possible and is currently investigating the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of this mode of drug uptake.

In addition, Dr. Brusseau is investigating the extent to which the fetal stress response may be modulated by intraamniotic instillation of opioids and subsequently whether preterm labor may be ablated as a result. This work will also lend itself to investigation of fetal neuroanatomic development in the setting of exposure to various medications and anesthetics in utero.

An additional research area he is pursuing involves exploiting the fetal metabolic and secretory, and excretory pathways to ion-trap active drugs and their active metabolites within the fetal compartment for extedended durations of action. These investigations have immediate clinical relevance for his work with the fetal cardiac anesthesia team, which supports cardiologists performing in utero catheter-based fetal interventions.