So What Exactly is Propofol?
We’ve been reading a lot about the strange drug Propofol and its role in the Michael Jackson death. But what exactly does it do, and how dangerous is it? Newsweek interviewed Dr. David Kloth to get some helpful background about the anesthetic that Dr. Conrad Murray administered to the pop star.
“Propofol is a medication that was invented 20 to 25 years ago for anesthesia. It’s what we call a sedative hypnotic. It puts you to sleep; it makes you forget things,” says Dr. David Kloth, past president of American Society of Interventionism Pain Physicians and current president of Connecticut Pain Society. It’s used in the emergency room and during surgery for sedation. The drug is an ideal for anesthesia because it works quickly and leaves very little lingering effects when used correctly. “It comes on very quickly; it also wears off very quickly. If someone’s on a continuous drip, and you turn it off, in five or 10 minutes, they’re wide awake,” says Kloth.
Jackson, who reportedly suffered from debilitating insomnia, may have been seeking a little shut eye with the aid of this drug. What makes his death more tragic is that propofol wouldn’t have helped his exhaustion. “It does not cause stage 4 REM sleep,” Kloth says. “Michael Jackson was unfortunately either misinformed or misunderstood … He would actually wake unrested, because the brain did not enter the appropriate stage of sleep.”
So in addition to being dangerous, the drug didn’t even help Jackson’s exhaustion. Sounds like he was getting a lot of faulty medical advice while his health deteriorated. Was his untimely death inevitable?