ABSTRACT
Basic support for all patients includes attention to anesthetic depth, provision of analgesia, support of normal respiratory, cardiovascular and thermoregulatory function, and attention to basic husbandry. The anesthetist should pay particular attention to administration of the inhalant anesthetics since anesthetic drugs can rapidly cause an excessive depth of anesthesia. Both excessively slow heart rates and excessively fast heart rates can cause decreased cardiac output which can cause hypotension. Tachycardia can be caused by cardiac disease but in anesthetized patients is most likely caused by an underlying problem, like pain, an excessively light plane of anesthesia, hypovolemia, hypoxemia and/or hypercarbia. Fluids should not be administered orally to anesthetized patients because they can't swallow and might breathe fluids into their lungs. These fluids have low sodium, and as such are suggested for use in patients with cardiac disease but the need for this is controversial and hypotonic crystalloids are not currently recommended for anesthetized patients, even those with cardiac disease.
