Adverse reactions (ARs) resulting due to the drugs that are administered during general anesthesia may be very severe and life-threatening. Such unfortunate situations are accompanied by a mortality rate ranging from 3 to 9% raising serious health concerns. To reduce the ARs resulting due to the drugs that are administered during general anesthesia it was important to focus on the agents that are most frequently responsible for perioperative anaphylaxis.
The adverse reactions to drugs may be IgE and non-IgE-mediated. Neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBA) were observed to be the first cause of perioperative reactions during general anesthesia followed by latex, antibiotics, hypnotic agents, opioids, colloids, dyes, and antiseptics (chlorhexidine). All the previously mentioned substances (i.e. NMBA, anesthetics, antibiotics, latex devices) may cause severe systemic non-IgE-mediated reactions or fatal anaphylactic events even in the absence of any evident risk factor in the patient’s anamnesis.
The study concluded through its findings that as all the substances may cause ARs so in order to minimize perioperative anaphylactic reactions, it is important to have rapid, specific, sensitive in vitro diagnostic tests able to confirm the clinical diagnosis of acute anaphylaxis.
Reference: https://clinicalmolecularallergy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12948-018-0094-7
