Relationship between potency and boiling point of general anesthetics: a thermodynamic consideration

The most important group of nonspecific drugs is that of the general anesth etics. These nonspecific compounds vary greatly in structure, fi om noble g ases such as Ar or Xe to complex steroids. Since the development of clinica l anesthesia over a century ago, then has been a vast amount of research an d speculation concerning the mechanism of action of general anesthetics. De spite these efforts, the exact mechanism remains unknown. Many theories of narcosis do not explain how unconsciousness is produced at a molecular leve l, but instead relate some physicochemical property of anesthetic agents to their anesthetic potencies. In this paper, we address some of those physic ochemical properties, with more emphasis on correlating the anesthetic pote ncy of volatile anesthetics to their boiling points based on thermodynamic principles. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.