The miracles of modern medicine allow doctors to fix problems in the human body that their predecessors couldn’t even diagnose. The rapidly growing field of medical technology continues to eradicate threats to human life at every turn, but one of the most important leaps forward in medicine has been anesthesia’s ability to keep patients comfortable during difficult procedures.

Today, there are many different types of anesthetics available to doctors. They can be injected, applied topically, or even inhaled by the patient. How inhaled anesthetics do their job stays the same, but which chemicals are used and what procedures they are used for change frequently.

A Brief History of Inhaled Anesthetics

As little as one hundred years ago, reliable anesthetics were hard to come by. Many different ancient cultures experimented with powerful narcotics in order to relieve human suffering, but early attempts at administering these remedies often went awry. Laughing gas, an anesthetic regularly used in dentistry, was not discovered until 1775 and was not put into regular medical use until the 1840s. Other medical professionals would experiment with other inhalants like chloroform and ether throughout the nineteenth century.

Common Inhaled Anesthetics

Nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, and chloroform were among the first and most commonly used anesthetics. The latter two eventually fell out of use because of adverse side effects. Laughing gas is still in regular use as an anesthetic for dentists because it sufficiently numbs without causing one to lose consciousness. This is important in dentistry because the dentist often needs to speak to his or her patient.

Most other inhaled anesthetics used today render the patient unconscious. This is called general anesthesia and considered the best option to long or intricate surgeries. Fluorochemicals are uniquely suited to being general anesthetics because they can easily be turned into vapor and are nonflammable. Many of these fluorochemicals are used in conjunction with each other in order to create effective anesthesia:

• Sevoflurane


• Desflurane


• Isoflurane


• Enflurane


• Halothane

Most patients going into surgery today receive a cocktail of sevoflurane, desflurane, and nitrous oxide. Though many anesthesiologists use these substances skillfully, none of them are ideal. Some irritate the airways while others have a shorter potency. Some can even affect the organs adversely, so they are used sparingly. Professional anesthesiologists learn how to mix the gasses so that the patient experiences no adverse side effects and stay asleep for the entire procedure.

How Inhaled Anesthetics Work

Inhaled anesthetics is general anesthesia because of the way they are administered. Since the gas is taken into the lungs, it travels indiscriminately through the blood stream. General anesthesia is defined as a state where the patient is unconscious, immobile, and free of pain. Nitrous oxide only has the power to keep a patient from feeling pain.

Once the patient is anesthetized, the gas enters the blood in the same way as oxygen. The chemical moves through the circulatory system to the brain. Though it is still unclear exactly what effect general anesthetics have on the body, it is likely that immobility is caused when the chemical reaches the spinal cord. When the anesthetics find their way into the nervous system, pain is blocked. Lastly, the patient is rendered unconscious by the fluorochemicals’ effect on the brain.

The anesthesiologist will continue to administer the gas as needed by the patient. The rest of the anesthetic will be removed from the body with other wastes and be expelled with carbon dioxide. In time, the patient will wake up with a few minor side-effects. These are generally caused by a build-up of the chemicals in the body, but serious problems are rare.

General Anesthesia and Inhalants

Inhaled anesthetics are not the only way to induce general anesthesia. Some procedures use intravenous application of other chemicals in order to achieve the same effect. Even though these general anesthetics have been in use for some time, they can be harmful if they are not administered properly. This is why anesthesiologists are a pivotal part of the surgical team.

The aim of all medical procedures is safety, so because general anesthesia can cause problems, it is avoided whenever possible. However, there are some situations, such as serious and extensive surgery, in which it is the best course of action. In these cases, inhaled anesthetics allow doctors to gently put the patient to sleep and help doctors make difficult procedures less taxing. Their use makes many remarkable feats performed by surgeons possible.

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About Author: Stephanie Larkin is a freelance writer who writes about issues and topics pertaining to the use of chemicals such as Anesthetics