Recent advances in injectable anesthesia for the small animal patient

摘要

Injectable anesthetic drugs are used as sedatives, anesthetic induction agents and for the maintenance of anesthesia in veterinary patients. An ideal injectable anesthetic drug is easily administered by any route, causes no tissue irritation, has a reliable onset, duration and range (light sedation to general anesthesia) of action, results in a smooth recovery from anesthesia, provides analgesia at sub-anesthetic doses and has no negative physiologic effects. To date no such drug or drug combination is available, and reported anesthetic morbidity and mortality in healthy small animal patients remains higher than that reported in human beings. In recent years many new injectable anesthetic and adjuvant drugs have been developed in an effort to minimize anesthetic drug induced complications. Following is a summary of objective information pertaining to the clinical use of 5 of these newer agents with applications to small animal anesthesia.