The relevance of metabolic and endocrine responses to anesthesia and surgery

The development of anesthesia has reached a stage where the evaluation of the usefulness of metabolic and endocrine responses is highly important. At present, these responses are commonly modulated in patients known to benefit most (e.g. patients with ischemic cardiovascular disease and patients undergoing major abdominal surgery), but no methods of totally response-free anesthesia and surgery are available, nor are there methods for the modulation of the responses on a wide clinical scale. Fortunately, in most patients undergoing conventional elective operations good anesthetic care is sufficient for blunting of the responses. Better methods of modulating the responses may be available in the future, which will greatly change anesthesia practice.