Purpose of review: The importance of accuracy in controlling the dose-response relation for intravenous anesthetics is directly related to the importance of optimizing the efficacy and quality of anesthesia while minimizing adverse drug effects. Therefore, it is important to measure and control all steps of the pharmacokinetic and dynamic cascade influencing this dose-effect relationship.
Recent findings: The ultimate goal when administering a particular dose of a drug is to obtain the desired clinical effect, taking into account interindividual pharmacokinetic and dynamic variability. Recent findings suggest that effect compartment-controlled target-controlled infusion systems and measurement of (surrogate) clinical drug effects might be helpful in an attempt to optimize the administration intravenous anesthetics and opioids. Additionally, recent findings suggest that the pharmacokinetic and dynamic interaction between anesthetics and opioids is important and such be taking into account when optimizing drug administration. Hereby, feedback control technology and advisory displays depicting these interactions have been studied.
Summary: Anesthetic drug administration might be optimized by applying knowledge from clinical pharmacokinetics and dynamics.