Gas Kinetics and Metabolism in Anesthesia During Non Steady State

During clinical anesthesia, it is astonishing that CO2 monitoring consists mainly of end-tidal PCO2 to confirm endotracheal intubation and to estimate ventilation, and O2 monitoring consists of a single PO2 measurement to detect a hypoxic gas mixture. Better understanding of how O2 and CO2 kinetics monitoring can define systems pathophysiology will greatly enhance safety in anesthesia by detecting critical events such as abrupt decrease in cardiac output (Q.T) by vena-caval compression during abdominal surgery, occurrence of CO2 pulmonary embolism during laparoscopy, rising tissue O2 consumption (V.O2) during light anesthesia, and onset of anaerobic metabolism (V.CO2 is disproportionately higher than V.O2).