Glioma is one of the most frequent primary brain tumors. Currently, the most common therapeutic strategy for patients with glioma is surgical resection combined with radiotherapy or/and adjuvant chemotherapy. However, due to the metastatic and invasive nature of glioma cells, the recurrence rate is high, resulting in poor prognosis. In recent years, gas therapy has become an emerging treatment. Studies have shown that the proliferation, metastasis and invasiveness of glioma cells exposed to anesthetic gases are obviously inhibited. Therefore, anesthetic gas may play a special therapeutic role in gliomas. In this review, we aim to collect existing research and summarize the rules of using anesthetic gases on glioma, providing potential strategies for further clinical treatment.
Keywords: anesthetic gases; glioma; invasion; isoflurane; metastasis; proliferation; sevoflurane.