Quality of recovery (QoR) is a newer concept, which aims to measure a patient's health status after surgery and anaesthesia. The use of dexmedetomidine during spinal surgery has been associated with improved quality of recovery in the early postoperative period3. There are suggestions that dexmedetomidine attenuates the increase in inflammatory mediators during a stress response4 which could have a role in the post-surgical stress response. There are no studies that have attempted to correlate dexmedetomidine use with quality of recovery following cardiac surgery.