A safe and effective form of pain relief would be an advantage in the prehospital treatment of patients experiencing extreme pain. Although used by many emergency medical services, 50% nitrous oxide (an inhaled analgesic known to have good pain relief properties) is not widely used by volunteer and semiprofessional organisations. This review aimed to determine whether 50% nitrous oxide is safe ...

Data from two published and one new meta-analysis were reviewed to compare the antiemetic efficacy of three different anaesthetic regimens: (i) propofol anaesthesia compared with another anaesthetic (control); (ii) anaesthesia without nitrous oxide compared with the same anaesthetic with nitrous oxide (control); (iii) propofol anaesthesia without nitrous oxide (TIVA) compared with another anaes...

We have studied the effects of nitrous oxide on EEG burst suppression patterns during stable isoflurane anaesthesia in 13 ASA I patients. After induction of anaesthesia with propofol, the concentration of isoflurane was increased with continuous EEG monitoring to burst suppression level (mean end-tidal concentration of isoflurane, 1.7 (SD 0.2)%), and kept constant during the study. During surge...

Aims—To evaluate the eYcacy and safety of nitrous oxide for children undergoing painful procedures. Methods—Ninety children requiring repeated painful procedures (lumbar puncture, bone marrow aspirate, venous cannulation, or dressing changes) were given nitrous oxide at a variable concentration of 50–70%. Procedure related distress was evaluated using the Observational Scale of Behavioral Distr...

Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (NAC) plays a crucial role in the action of various psychotropic and addictive drugs, such as antagonists of the N-methyl-D-aspartate subtype of the glutamate. Although both nitrous oxide and xenon are N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonists, they differ in their potential for producing neuropsychological toxicity; therefore, we decided to examine the...

BACKGROUND There is a plausible pathophysiologic rationale for increased long-term cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in patients receiving significant exposure to nitrous oxide. However, this relationship has not been established clinically. The ENIGMA trial randomized 2050 patients having noncardiac surgery lasting more than 2 hours to nitrous oxide-based or nitrous oxide-free anesthesia....

BACKGROUND Nitrous oxide limits intraoperative hypothermia because the vasoconstriction threshold with nitrous oxide is higher than with equi-minimum alveolar concentrations of sevoflurane or isoflurane, presumably because of its stimulating actions on the sympathetic nervous system. Xenon, in contrast, does not cause sympathetic activation. Therefore, the authors tested the hypothesis that the...

BACKGROUND Even the best cancer surgery is usually associated with minimal residual disease. Whether these remaining malignant cells develop into clinical recurrence is at least partially determined by adequacy of host defense, especially natural killer cell function. Anesthetics impair immune defenses to varying degrees, but nitrous oxide appears to be especially problematic. We therefore test...

Adverse effects may occur when patients with air in the pleural space or in the cerebral ventricles breathe nitrous oxide. We developed an animal model to learn whether similar adverse effects are associated with the inhalation of nitrous oxide when air is present in the subcutaneous space. We induced extensive subcutaneous emphysema in swine and measured oxygen and carbon dioxide tensions in s...

The effect of halothane or nitrous oxide or both, on division of cultured, murine bone-marrow cells was investigated. Halothane caused a dose-dependent depression of growth rate ranging from a minimal effect at 0.5% to almost total inhibition at 2.0%. Nitrous oxide 75% had an effect similar to 0.5% halothane and the combination of 0.75% halothane with 75% nitrous oxide produced results little d...