Principles and Practice of Pharmacology for Anaesthetists

Anaesthesia is applied pharmacology with the aim of producing unconciousness, abolishing sensivity, to pain, reducing muscle tone and maintaining the vital functions of heart rate, blood pressure and respiration during a surgical operation. The tools of the anaesthetist are drugs and it is, therefore, central to the training of any anaesthetist to understand the principles of drug action, disposition and elimination, as well as the administration of drugs in anaesthetic practice. This book provides the wherewithal to acquire such knowledge and is the standard textbook for the trainee anaesthetist preparing for part II of the FCAnaes. examination. The authors are both senior clinical tutors with long experience of teaching pharmacology to anaesthetists. This edition ensures that all the recent developments in terms of drugs and anaesthetic practice have been taken into account. Since the first edition there have also been advances in pharmacology and in a number of instances, accepted explanations for the mechanism of action of drugs have been altered. There are three completely new chapters: variability in drug response, antihypertensive agents and anticoagulants. The first five chapters of the book cover basic principles of pharmacology: drug absorption, distribution and elimination; pharmacokinetics; drug action; drug interaction; variability in drug response. The larger part of the book is devoted to a systematic treatment of the mode of action, pharmacokinetics, clinical use and unwanted effects of all drugs in use in modern anaesthesia. There is also coverage of the means of selecting the right drug for a particular case.