[Surgical stress and anesthetic protection]

Surgical pain triggers a series of neuro-endocrine change in the patient's organism both during the operation and at the post-operative stage, exposing the patient to a parapathological and quite afinalistic situation. It is the task of anaesthesia to prevent these adaptation reactions setting in or at least to attenuate them. Various anaesthesiological techniques are compared and results are examined with a view to establishing what technique is capable of procuring most anaesthesiological "protection".