Clinical significance of the biotransformation of inhalation anesthetics.

Inhalation anesthetics, a class of drugs formerly believed to be biologically inert, are now recognized to undergo considerable biotransformation. The viscerotoxicity of certain anesthetics on kidney and liver can be explained in terms of metabolism. The entity of "halothane hepatitis" remains mechanistically and diagnostically a mystery, but if it exists, it could be due to abnormalities of biotransformation.