Anaesthetic relevance of drugs used to treat cancer

The potential threat of drug interactions when patients receiving chemotherapy undergo anaesthesia is poorly documented, and it is very difficult to derive a method of predicting when interactions are likely to occur and their severity. However, there are reported interactions between anti-cancer drugs and anaesthetic agents and medicinal gases as well as with drugs such as anti-emetic agents, which have uses in both anaesthesia and chemotherapy. In addition, interactions with some of the newer agents, such as monoclonal antibodies, cancer vaccines, proteosome inhibitors, kinase inhibitors and integrin antagonists etc, are yet to be revealed. It should also be borne in mind that immunosuppressive activity is a property not only of virtually all general anaesthetic agents but also virtually all cytotoxics.