Various clinical trials have assessed how intraoperative anesthetics can affect early recovery, hemodynamics and nociception after supratentorial craniotomy. Whether or not the difference in recovery pattern differs in a meaningful way with anesthetic choice is controversial. This review examines and compares different anesthetics with respect to wake-up time, hemodynamics, respiration, cogniti...

CONTEXT Anesthetic drugs including halogenated anesthetics have been common for many years. Consequent hepatic injury has been reported in the literature. The mechanism of injury is immunoallergic. The first generation drug was halothane; it had the most toxicity when compared to other drugs. The issue becomes more important when the patient has an underlying hepatic dysfunction. EVIDENCE ACQ...

The new generation of inhalational anesthetics has been widely used for general anesthesia in both clinical and experimental settings because of their safety, reliability and potency. A neuroprotective role has recently been revealed for some of these anesthetics, including the volatile gases isoflurane, sevoflurane, and desflurane, as well as the inert gas xenon. In vivo and in vitro studies h...

Recent speculative articles in the medical literature have indicted certain inhalational anesthetics as contributing to global warming. This unfounded speculation may have deleterious patient impact.

General anesthetics have been a mainstay of surgical practice for more than 150 years, but the mechanisms by which they mediate their important clinical actions remain unclear. Ion channels represent important anesthetic targets, and, although GABA(A) receptors have emerged as major contributors to sedative, immobilizing, and hypnotic effects of intravenous anesthetics, a role for those recepto...

Nitric oxide (NO) is an important biological messenger involved in the regulation of blood vessel tone, neurotransmission, inflammatory responses, and host defenses. Inhalational anesthetics have been shown to inhibit the function of the NO signaling pathway in a variety of tissues. In addition, acute inhibition of the NO signaling pathway significantly reduced the required alveolar concentrati...