Volatile Anaesthetic Depression of the Carotid Body Chemoreflex-Mediated Ventilatory Response to Hypoxia: Directions for Future Research

Figure 3

The mean effect of low dose (<0.2 MAC) anaesthetics on hypoxic and hypercapnic ventilatory responses in humans (values taken from data presented in references [5, 13]) and the data for animal carotid bodies (from this study). The smaller the value for standardised anaesthetic effect, the greater the depressive action of anaesthetic. For both animal carotid body and human ventilation, anaesthetics significantly depress hypoxic but not hypercapnic response. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The horizontal line represents the line of unity (i.e., no effect of anaesthetic).