Basic concepts of total intravenous anesthesia

Intravenous anesthesia has a long history, but it has always played an auxiliary role compared with inhalation anesthesia. It is mostly used for induction of inhalation anesthesia, auxiliary inhalation anesthesia, basic anesthesia or relatively short surgery. The disadvantage of intravenous anesthesia in the past was poor controllability. Repeated use of intravenous anesthetics will accumulate in the body and it is difficult to eliminate it quickly. In addition, a concern of using total intravenous anesthesia is that the depth of anesthesia is difficult to judge, for fear of knowing it during operation.

In 1960s, great progress was made in the implementation and research of total intravenous anesthesia, especially intravenous procaine anesthesia with China characteristics, which was of great significance in the history of anesthesia. Now total intravenous anesthesia can be competent for any surgical anesthesia similar to inhalation anesthesia, and its controllability can be comparable to it, completely getting rid of the previous supporting role and becoming one of the main methods of anesthesia.

The maturity of total intravenous anesthesia benefits from the development of intravenous ultra-short-acting drugs and the improvement of intravenous administration technology based on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.