Since the advent of general anaesthesia over 150 years ago it has been recognised that the price of human safety while unconscious is eternal vigilance by the caregiver, the ability to handle life threatening problems and a systematic analysis of error. John Snow, a pioneer of anaesthesia and clinical epidemiology, placed reliance on observation of the respiratory pattern and the pulse and such...

In this ®nal article I shall try to summarize new scienti®c insights resulting from and in connection with the Sixth International Conference on Molecular and Basic Mechanisms of Anaesthesia (MAC2001) regarding the targets at which anaesthetics act, the mechanisms underlying their actions at these targets, and the implications for theories of anaesthesia. The ®rst section of this review will co...

Awareness during general anesthesia with subsequent explicit recall is a serious and frequently preventable problem that is gaining attention from clinicians and patients alike. Cost-effective interventions that increase vigilance should be implemented to decrease the likelihood of this complication.

Human Sciences Research Council and the Birth to Twenty Research Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, S.L. Jain Hospital, New Delhi, India, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of South...