Possible New General Anesthetics Discovered

Of all the milestones and achievements made in medicine, pain control is one of the few that has affected almost every person in the world. The primary motive of surgery was to save lives that were being lost to unknown conditions and diseases each year. This fact led to an increase in the practice of surgery and it was often a nightmare, because it brought horrible pain and suffering to the patient.

Surgical Anesthesia Invented

Joseph Priestly, an English scientist, was the first to discover that inhaled nitrous oxide may have the potential to relieve pain. Other medical experts followed suit and used other gases such as carbon dioxide to induce similar results. Cocaine was injected into the mouth, eyes and other areas of the body in order to block nerve impulses. However, diethyl ether and nitrous oxide gained popularity after two American dentists started to use these gases in their practice, until it failed to work during a tooth surgery demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital.

A Boston dentist by the name of William Thomas Green Morton correctly concluded it was a good idea, but that these gases were not powerful enough to produce an anesthetic effect. He began to experiment with another gas called sulfuric ether. After using the gas successfully on animals and human dental patients, on October 16^th, 1846, Dr Morton publicly demonstrated the application of ether when removing a tumor from the neck of a patient. The operation went off without a hitch and at the end of 1847, books and literature about ether anesthesia started appearing in the US and many countries throughout Europe. For the very first time, a safe and consistent anesthesia was available.

Crawford Long: 'The Pioneer Of Surgical Anesthesia'

Different anesthesia practices were used during this time, but Crawford Long revived the field of surgical anesthesia through using diethyl ether as an anesthetic. This discovery was based on his observations and earned him the nickname "The Pioneer of Surgical Anesthesia". In honor of his groundbreaking discovery, he is recognized on "Doctor’s Day", to celebrate the birth of anesthesia that eliminated human pain.

See Also: Brain Recovery After Anesthesia

Risks Associated With General Anesthesia

Usually, general anesthesia is safe for people who are healthy, but there are some who may risk problems and these include:

• Smokers
• People suffering from drug and/or alcohol addiction or abuse
• People who have a personal or family history of medicine allergies
• Those with heart, lung and/or kidney problems

New, Safer Forms Of General Anesthesia Are Being Developed

Before Surgery

Before a person undergoes surgical anesthesia, a doctor should be told if a female is pregnant or if the person is taking any medications or herbal supplements. General anesthesia is usually safe because of modern equipment, medication and safety standards that are followed. Most individuals recover from anesthesia and do not experience any setbacks, however, there are those rare instances where complications can occur, so it is not without risk.

New Forms Of Anesthesia Discovered

According to the World Forum for Medicine, Penn Medicine researchers found a way to better understand how anesthesia works in the body. The team has found the first new class of anesthetics since the 1970s. The findings detail the process through which the group was able to locate these compounds.

A team led by Dr Roderic G Eckemhoff of the University of Maryland notes the development of novel anesthetics has historically been a process of trial and error, with most new ones developed via modifying an already existing anesthetic. Propofol, the most commonly used anesthetic in America, and the most recently developed, was very much a product of experimentation. The drug was originally developed in Europe and not used because patients were experiencing anaphylactic reactions. While the drug was reformulated and improved with water and soybean oil, it still remains highly potent.

In this particular study, the research team reviewed an assay based upon ferritin and a drug-like molecule called aminoanthracene, to test more than 350,000 different compounds for anesthetic properties. This process was performed in conjunction with the National Chemical Genomics Center (NCGS) at the NIH. It requires millions of separate assays, something that would, under normal circumstances, take decades of work, but at the NCGC it only took a week’s time.

The researchers then had to confirm that the hits from this test behaved like anesthetics in animal models, not just in a test tube (in vitro). The second test was performed by Dr Andrew McKinstry, a teacher in the department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, and it resulted in two of the compounds being identified as effective and non-toxic anesthetics when used in mice. Both compounds were of a novel chemical class, as well as completely unrelated to any currently used general anesthesia.

See Also: The Science Of Anesthetics

The goal was to identify compounds with high potency, but with low toxicity. Medical science is a very long way from getting these drugs into people and rigorous testing is still necessary. However, the primary conclusion of this new study is that it provides doctors and medical professionals with an entirely new approach to identifying novel anesthetics and there are now at least two known compounds that can be utilized and tested further.

More study and further advancement is needed in order to understand just how these new compounds work and how they may be best utilized.