The historical significance of anaesthesia events at Pearl Harbor

Abstract

Up to the end of World War II, less than 10% of the general anaesthetics administered were with intravenous barbiturates. The remaining 90% of anaesthetics given in the USA were with diethyl ether. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, chloroform was also popular. Diethyl ether administration was a relatively safe and simple procedure, often delegated to nurses or junior doctors with little or no specific training in anaesthesia. During the Japanese attack on the US bases at Pearl Harbor, with reduced stocks of diethyl ether available, intravenous Sodium Pentothal® , a most 'sophisticated and complex' drug, was used with devastating effects in many of those hypovolaemic, anaemic and septic patients. The hazards of spinal anaesthesia too were realised very quickly. These effects were compounded by the dearth of trained anaesthetists. This paper presents the significance of the anaesthesia tragedies at Pearl Harbor, and the discovery in the next few years of many other superior drugs which caused medical and other health professionals to realise that anaesthesia needed to be a specialist medical discipline in its own right. Specialist recognition soon followed, aided by the foundation of the National Health Service in the UK, the establishment of faculties of anaesthesia and appropriate training in pharmacology, physiology and other sciences. Modern anaesthesiology, as we understand it today, was born and a century or more of ether anaesthesia finally ceased.