The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7364 p251
27 August 2005

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· Birdsgrove House (2)
· Pharmacy practice (2)
· Adverse events
· Child protection
· Emergency supplies
· Reciprocity
· Chloramphenicol
· Retention fees

Letters to the Editor

Adverse events

Deaths from misuse of anaesthetics

From Mr J. Ramsey and others

We have for many years published an annual report cataloguing deaths from the abuse of volatile substances (www.vsareport.org). We have recently published the data for 2003 when there were 51 deaths associated with volatile substance abuse, mainly from domestic products containing butane.

However, we would like to draw to your readers’ attention to the fact that there were also five deaths associated with anaesthetic agents isoflurane and sevoflurane. These deaths were in adults, all of whom may have had access to the anaesthetic agents at their workplace.

We are concerned that we have evidence that may point to a problem of the misuse of liquid anaesthetics by operating theatre staff. Perhaps tighter control of these drugs is required.

John Ramsey
TICTAC Communications Ltd
London
Ross Anderson
Mary Field-Smith
Barbara Butland
Community Health Sciences
St George’s,
University of London

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