Background: Traditionally, minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) has been used as the standard measure to compare the potencies of volatile anesthetics. However, it reflects the spinal mechanism of immobility rather than the subcortical mechanism of analgesia. Recently, the surgical pleth index (SPI) derived from photoplethysmographic waveform was shown to reflect the intraoperative analgesic co...

Thirty male Wistar albino rats were equally divided into two groups. All the animals were sedated with 5 mg kg of xylazine hydrochloride, and then 2.5% isoflurane or 8% desflurane with 100% oxygen by mask induction were given and anaesthesia maintenance was continued for 60 min with 5.7% desflurane or 1.4% isoflurane. Anaesthesia applications were repeated on the 1, 3, and 7 d in both groups. H...

BACKGROUND During general anesthesia, a heated breathing circuit (HBC) is used to replace the heat and moisture exchange function of the upper airway. One HBC uses an air dryer filter that employs silica gel (SG) as a desiccant. SG is capable of adsorbing many organic compounds. Therefore, we undertook an in vitro study of the adsorption of desflurane by SG filters. METHODS An HBC was connect...

BACKGROUND Post operative recovery has been reported to be faster with desflurane than sevoflurane anesthesia in previous studies. The use of desflurane is often criticized in neurosurgery due to the concerns of cerebral vasodilation and increase in ICP and studies comparing desflurane and sevoflurane in neurosurgey are scarce. So we compared the intraoperative brain condition, hemodynamics and...

The letter from Dr. Venkatesan (1) correctly notes that several months before publishing our article (2) in Anesthesia & Analgesia, Yildirim et al. (3) had published an article regarding the influence of desflurane on some variables of cardiac ventricular repolarization. Yildirim et al.’s paper was published after our manuscript had been submitted to Anesthesia & Analgesia, and we had no knowle...

IMPLICATIONS Compared to propofol, maintenance of anesthesia with desflurane provided significantly better intraoperative conditions during office-based surgery. In addition, desflurane with routine antiemetic prophylaxis was associated with a faster early recovery and similar incidence of postoperative side effects.

BACKGROUND The most consistent risk factor for postoperative renal failure is poor preoperative renal function. Desflurane is not contraindicated in patients with renal disease, but the data regarding its effects on renal function in these patients are sparse. METHODS Only patients with preexisting renal disease were recruited into the study. In 51 adults undergoing elective surgery, general ...

BACKGROUND Inhaled anesthetics are recognized greenhouse gases. Calculating their relative impact during common clinical usage will allow comparison to each other and to carbon dioxide emissions in general. METHODS We determined infrared absorption cross-sections for sevoflurane and isoflurane. Twenty-year global warming potential (GWP(20)) values for desflurane, sevoflurane, and isoflurane w...

BACKGROUND Desflurane during early reperfusion has been shown to postcondition human myocardium, in vitro. We investigated the role of adenosine and bradykinin receptors, and generation of radical oxygen species in desflurane-induced postconditioning in human myocardium. METHODS We recorded isometric contraction of human right atrial trabeculae hanged in an oxygenated Tyrode's solution (34 de...