Therapeutic coma or neuroprotection by anaesthetics.

Some surgical patients are at an increased risk for developing cerebral ischaemia. A subset of these patients is believed to benefit from putative cerebroprotective effects of anaesthetic agents. Therefore, in this setting these drugs could have therapeutic modalities, besides their auxiliary functions to make surgery possible. However, both animal and especially human data are very disappointing. Only the barbiturates and isoflurane have an experimental record warranting further research to delineate proper indications for their use as neuroprotective agents in surgical patients.