Twenty-three million Americans, or 10% of the United States population, suffer from essential hypertension.1 About 20,000 persons, or 0.1 to 0.5% of hypertensive individuals, also have pheochromocytoma. This catecholamine-producing tumor arises from the chromaffin cells of the sympathoadrenal system. 2-4 It is a tumor which has no age or sex predilection, but seems to occur more often during th...

Jürgen Sandkühler, MD, PhD§ BACKGROUND: Xenon’s (Xe) mechanisms for producing anesthesia and analgesia are not fully understood. We tested the effect of Xe equilibrated in a lipid formulation or normal saline on spinal C-fiber-evoked potentials and on the induction of synaptic long-term potentiation (LTP). METHODS: C-fiber-evoked field potentials were recorded in the superficial lumbar spinal c...

Introduction Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common disorder that can be challenging to treat. Currently, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the treatment of choice for MDD, but has unpleasant side effects. At Royal University Hospital, a general anesthetic is provided for this treatment, and propofol is the most commonly used anesthetic agent. Ketamine is an alternative anesthetic agent w...

Local anesthetic toxicity remains a clinical concern when performing regional anesthesia. Because signs and symptoms of toxicity may not appear for 20 to 30 minutes after administration of local anesthetic, vigilance is crucial. When signs and symptoms of local anesthetic toxicity appear, traditional standards mandate resuscitative measures, including maintenance of oxygenation, elimination of ...

A molecular understanding of volatile general anesthetic mechanisms of action will ultimately require high-resolution structural descriptions of anesthetic–protein complexes. Structural changes in proteins following anesthetic binding have been technically difficult to detect, but presumably underlie many of the resulting reversible alterations in protein function. Using three different spectro...

Homogenous bacteriorhodopsin-DPPC proteoliposomes were characterized and used as a target for the general anesthetic Enflurane. Dose–response curves for the protein and the lipids, in the very same sample, at high (2800) and low (360) lipid: bacteriorhodopsin molar ratios, were compared simultaneously. Above the main phase transition temperature of DPPC, there is no difference between the prote...

Pediatric neurosurgical patients present a unique set of anesthetic challenges that include treatment of increased intracranial pressure (ICP), the use of positions other than supine, and the anesthetic implications of neurophysiologic monitoring. These and other general considerations are addressed in the first part of this chapter, followed by a discussion of anesthetic techniques for common ...

Introduction: Ensuring an adequate Depth of Anesthesia (DOA) during surgery is essential for anesthesiologists. Since the effect of anesthetic drugs is on the central nervous system, brain signals such as Electroencephalogram (EEG) can be used for DOA estimation. Anesthesia can interfere among brain regions, so the relationship among different areas can be a key factor in the anesthetic process...

purpose: to describe the clinical signs, diagnosis and treatment of toxic keratopathy in a patient who abused tetracaine drops. case report: a 32-year-old man was referred to the emergency ward of our center with persistent corneal epithelial defect associated with a ring infiltrate in the corneal stroma, without any history of ocular trauma or contact lens use. the patient was hospitalized and...

To measure the depth of the local anesthetic binding site within the neuronal membrane, biotin-containing polyethylene glycols having zero, three, and six ethylene glycol subunits were added to the p-amino termini of tetracaine and procaine, thereby interposing a pharmacologically inert "spacer" molecule between the local anesthetic and the biotin moiety. These biotinyl-local anesthetic derivat...