Volatile anesthetics and the hypoxic ventilatory response: effects, clinical implications, and future research

This review discusses the implications of some early findings concerning the effect of volatile anesthetic agents on the human ventilatory response to hypoxia. The impact of different methods of study are discussed, as is the relevance and limitations of animal studies. The review speculates that a relatively simple observation from human study can lead to important questions, answerable using newer technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, intracellular calcium imaging and single-cell/single-channel voltage clamping.