British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2001, Vol. 87, No. 6 813-815
© 2001 The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anaesthesia
Editorial |
Editorial II
Comparative mortality in anaesthesia
Ever since the advent of general anaesthesia in 1846, the subject of anaesthetic mortality has been a source of considerable debate and discussion. In the late 1880s, the Hyderabad Commissions concluded that chloroform was a completely safe anaesthetic agent in the human species.1 The Lancet commissioned its own study and this was probably the first epidemiological investigation of the effects of anaesthetic agents in any species.2 On the basis of animal experiments, the Hyderabad Commissions had concluded that chloroform was a safe agent in man but the Lancet Commission challenged these findings. They concluded that death under chloroform anaesthesia was 8.7 times more likely than death under ether anaesthesia, whereas chloroform was only administered 6.1 times more often than ether. Whilst the members of the commission failed to establish the relative safety of ether or chloroform, they focused attention on the role of human error in the aetiology of anaesthetic
Horses
Small animals
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