Orion announces EU launch of new Dexdor sedative

Orion has announced plans to roll out its new intensive care product Dexdor in Europe in the next year.

The company announced during the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine's annual congress that it received central marketing authorisation for the new product last month.

Dexdor is a dexmedetomidine-based sedative agent, the first of its kind to be introduced in Europe for more than a decade, and is intended for use among adult patients requiring a sedation level not deeper than arousal in response to verbal stimulation.

The product has already made its debut in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, with further launches taking place in 2012.

Mervyn Singer, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, said: "It offers sedation albeit with ready reusability … analgesia and a lack of respiratory depression, thus circumventing many of the downsides of our current armamentarium."

The product is sold by Hospira in more than 30 non-EU nations under the name Precedex.