ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a broad overview of the pathways and enzymology of anesthetic metabolism, with emphasis on the currently used volatile anesthetics. The focus is a ba sic understanding of modern drug metabo lism research so that the metabolism and toxicity of drugs in clinical use today can be readily understood and those introduced in the future can be predicted by anesthe siologists. In addition, the material dis cussed provides a basis for understanding (a) the 40-fold variation in the ability of nor mal human subjects to metabolize a given drug and (b) why one drug will have an im pact on the metabolism, clinical effect, and toxicity of another.
