Will Xenon Be a Stranger or a Friend?

Abstract

Xenon is both an old and a new anesthetic. Although its anesthetic properties have been known for more than 50 yr, it was largely forgotten until 1990,1 mainly because of its high cost. Aside from this problem, xenon possesses many of the characteristics of an ideal anesthetic. For ex- ample, its blood–gas partition coefficient is extremely small (0.115),2 yielding rapid emergence from anesthesia3 regardless of the duration of anesthesia.4 It lacks teratoge- nicity,5 and it produces analgesia,6 thereby suppressing hemodynamic and catecholamine responses to surgical stimulation.7,8 It is also a potent hypnotic.9,10 Unlike many conventional anesthetics, xenon does not produce hemo- dynamic depression in healthy humans11 and in dogs with normal hearts and with cardiomyopathy,12 at least in part because it has no actions on some important cardiac ion channels.13,14 The characteristics of xenon have been re- viewed more extensively elsewhere.