Nephrotoxicity can result from using methoxyflurane
Ten patients given halothane anesthesia during abdominal surgery had a normal postoperative course while all patients receiving methoxyflurane showed at least some symptoms of kidney damage
A California study has linked the anesthetic methoxyflurane postoperative with kidney damage.
This is not the first time that the widely used anesthetic (by some estimates as many as two million doses per year) has been reported to cause nephrotoxicity but it is, perhaps, the first well controlled and continuing study.
In 1966, Walter B. Crandell, MD, of the VA Hospital in White River Junction, Vt., and associates reported similar findings in the journal Anesthesiology. The findings at that time were duly noted but several questions remained unresolved. Other isolated clinical reports of the same phenomenon have appeared from time to time.
The new study was carried out at the Palo Alto, Calif, VA Hospital by Richard I.
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