Off-label Drugs in Perioperative Medicine: Clonidine

Alpha-2 agonists produce diverse responses, including analgesia, anxiolysis, sedation—hypnosis and sympatholysis [1, 2]. Clonidine represents a valuable, and arguably still underexploited, resource in patient management, especially during the perioperative period. Clonidine has been widely used for >35 years to treat hypertension, and off-label for a variety of purposes, including withdrawal from long-term abuse of drugs or alcohol [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], as well as to reduce perioperative stress in patients who are at risk of perioperative ischaemia and are in chronic pain therapy [6].