The Food and Drug Administration has opened a safety review of sevoflurane and other general anesthetics, and the phrasing of the announcement is doing a lot of work that headlines can easily flatten.
In an alert issued on July 2, the agency said it is investigating the safety of sevoflurane and other general anesthetics based on published scientific reports of catastrophic outcomes, including severe neurologic injury and death, in adult and pediatric patients of maternal Venezuelan ancestry after routine general anesthesia. The immediate trigger was practical: after recent earthquakes in Venezuela, the FDA wanted agencies sending medical resources and clinicians traveling to the country to know about these rare events.
