Occupational exposure to volatile anaesthetics: a systematic review

The effects of long-term occupational exposure to small concentrations of volatile anaesthetics on health professionals are still uncertain despite the research literature available on this subject.

To analyse the existing literature on the health effects of volatile anaesthetics on exposed health professionals.

We performed a systematic review from March 2013 to January 2014. The literature was searched in the Medline and Cochrane libraries using the following keywords: 'Anaesthetics AND occupational health', 'Volatile anaesthetics AND occupational health', 'Sevoflurane AND occupational health' and 'Occupational surveillance AND anaesthetics', with no time limit. We used the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network to evaluate the quality of studies and to grade the recommendations.

From 1429 articles retrieved from the databases and an additional 20 obtained from secondary sources, we excluded 1391 (95.9%). After excluding duplicate publications, we finally included 17 articles in the review.

Evidence for adverse effects of volatile anaesthetics on exposed personnel is scarce and inconsistent, but there is no evidence of adverse effects when environmental levels are kept within legal threshold values. Further studies are needed to improve our knowledge of the effects of occupational exposure to volatile anaesthetics. New surveillance methods that include systematic data collection, clinical signs and biomarkers of exposure are required to formulate consistent and reproducible surveillance criteria for exposed personnel.