Postoperative delirium (POD) is a common postoperative complication of the elderly caused by a variety of factors. POD is an acute neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by disturbance of attention consciousness and cognitive function fluctuation, and more than 40% of elderly patients have symptoms of hypoactivity POD.The incidence of POD is as high as 17% to 61% in patients with neurocognitive impairment and patients undergoing complex or emergency surgery, which usually occurs between 1 and 3 days after surgery. POD will lead to prolonged hospital stay, functional impairment and even death. How to prevent and treat POD is an urgent clinical problem to be solved at present.~Opiates are commonly used perioperative sedatives and analgesics, which may be associated with the occurrence of postoperative POD in elderly patients and increase the risk of POD. It is not clear whether perioperative use of low doses of opioids could reduces the incidence of POD in elderly patients. In this study, reducing-opioids anesthesia was defined as the use of 1/3 of the conventional opioid dose to observe whether reducing-opioids anesthesia affected the incidence of POD in elderly patients undergoing gastric cancer surgery
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether perioperative use of low doses of opioids could reduce postoperative delirium .