Clinical Evidence of Any Effect of Anesthesia on the Developing Brain


There has been a steady stream of articles on the potential neurotoxicity issue since the FDA set the cat amongst the pigeons a year or so back. Some articles are just expert bias, others are well considered and balanced. This review of the human evidence by two of the leaders in the field is an example of the latter. Touching on all of the difficulties of generating new knowledge in this area, it goes through all of the relevant studies methodically. It is thorough, and worth reading and highlights the weaknesses in the human evidence for neurotoxicity, whilst not dismissing the much stronger preclinical data. As a one stop read to understand the current evidence base for this topic, you can’t go wrong.

Reviewed by: Justin Skowno