In continuation of our published review on general inhalational anesthetics, the current article presents a survey of intravenous agents for general anaesthesia. From chemical point of view these compounds belong to structurally diverse categories, such as barbiturates - thiopental (Sodium pentothal®, Trapanal®, Pentothal®), methohexital (Brevital®), and hexobarbital (Evipan®, Hexenal®, Citopan®, Tobinal®); non-barbiturate derivatives - ketamine (Ketalar® Ketaset®), esketamine (Ketanest®), and etomidate (Amidate®, Hypnomidate®), phenolic derivatives - propofol (Diprivan®); steroid derivatives - mixture of alfadolone and alfaxalone (Althesin® in human and Saffan® in veterinary anesthesia); and derivatives of phenylacetic acid - propanidid (Epontol®, Sombrevin®). Most of these compounds are chiral, with the exception of propofol and propanidid. Apart from etomidate and esketamine, they are used in the form of their racemates. Besides their characteristics and mechanism of action, attention is centred also on their chiral properties.
Keywords: chirality; general anesthetics; intravenous anesthetics; pharmacodynamics; pharmacokinetics; stereochemistry.