Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacologic Basis of Therapeutics, 12e > Section II. Neuropharmacology > Chapter 19. General Anesthetics and Therapeutic Gases Piyush M. Patel, Hemal H. Patel, David M. Roth

General Anesthetics

"General anesthetics depress the central nervous system to a sufficient degree to permit the performance of surgery and other noxious or unpleasant procedures. Inevitably, anesthetics also suppress normal homeostatic reflexes. Not surprisingly, general anesthetics have low therapeutic indices and thus require great care in administration. While all general anesthetics produce a relatively similar anesthetic state, they are quite dissimilar in their secondary actions (side effects) on other organ systems. The selection of specific drugs and routes of administration to produce general anesthesia is based on their pharmacokinetic properties and on the secondary effects of the various drugs, in the context of the proposed diagnostic or surgical procedure and with the consideration of the individual patient's age, associated medical condition, and medication use. Anesthesiologists also employ sedatives (Chapter 17), neuromuscular blocking agents (Chapter 11), and local anesthetics (Chapter 20) as the situation requires...."