The NMB drugs in common clinical use are classified as either depolarizing or non-depolarizing agents (Bowman, 2006). Depolarizing agents, such as suxamethonium and decamethonium, act similarly to the normal transmitter at the neuromuscular junction, acetylcholine. They bind to muscle receptors and trigger a muscle contraction but then produce a persistent depolarization, so preventing further muscle contractions. When drugs that act in this way are administered to an animal, generalized disorganized muscle twitches (fasciculations) are produced before complete skeletal muscle paralysis.

Non-depolarizing, or competitive blocking agents do not cause a muscle contraction before producing paralysis. Drugs in this group include tubocurarine, gallamine, pancuronium, alcuronium and vecuronium (Table 4.1). Since these agents act by competing with acetylcholine for receptor sites at the neuromuscular junction, their action can be reversed by increasing the local concentration of acetylcholine. This can be achieved by administering drugs such as neostigmine that block the activity of the enzymes which normally break down acetylcholine.

NMB agents must be used with great care, since their administration prevents all movements in response to pain. It would be possible, but obviously inhumane, to carry out a surgical procedure on an animal which had been paralysed but was still fully conscious. It is for this reason that the use of NMB drugs in experimental animals is subjected to careful control in many countries, for example special permission is required to use these agents in the UK, and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee review is required in the USA. NMB agents are nevertheless extremely useful adjuncts to anaesthesia and enable, for example the use of balanced anaesthetic regimens such as an opioid, an hypnotic and a muscle relaxant to provide stable surgical anaesthesia. Dose rates of a number of different NMB agents are given in Table 4.1.

If NMB drugs are used, other methods of assessing the depth of anaesthesia must be adopted. As a preliminary step, the proposed anaesthetic technique, excluding the NMB drug, should be administered to an animal of the same species and the proposed surgical procedure carried out. This will establish that the degree of analgesia and unconsciousness will be sufficient to allow surgery to be carried out humanely. Since considerable individual variation in response to anaesthesia occurs and some inadvertent alteration in the technique can arise, for example due to equipment malfunction, it is also necessary to provide an independent assessment of the depth of anaesthesia. Several indicators of anaesthetic depth are of use. Despite muscle paralysis, twitching of muscles may occur in response to a major surgical stimulus and this indicates that the depth of anaesthesia is inadequate. In humans, pupillary size may alter in response to surgical stimulation, but this sign is of little value in most animals, particularly if atropine has been included in the pre-anaesthetic medication.

Changes in blood pressure and heart rate are the most widely used indicators of adequacy of the depth of anaesthesia. Dramatic changes in heart rate or blood pressure are believed to indicate a depth of anaesthesia insufficient for the surgical procedures that are being undertaken . It has been suggested that increases in heart rate and blood pressure by 10–20% indicate the need for additional anaesthesia. However, many anaesthetics do not block these autonomic responses and 10–20% increases in heart rate can be seen in animals that have not received NMB drugs, and yet these animals show no movement in association with the stimulus. If inadequately anaesthetized, most animals respond to surgical stimuli with a rise in blood pressure, but some animals may show a fall in pressure. So despite their widespread acceptance, these parameters may not always be reliable indicators of adequate anaesthesia (Whelan and Flecknell, 1992).

An alternative method of monitoring the depth of anaesthesia is to use the EEG. Although this requires specialist equipment and expert interpretation, these may be available, especially if neurosurgical or neurophysiological studies are being carried out. Simple changes in the unprocessed EEG, such as onset of burst suppression, can be useful when using some anaesthetic agents, for example halothane. Various derived measures, for example total power and spectral edge frequency have also been used to assess depth of anaesthesia (Murrell and Johnson, 2006; Otto, 2008); however, these measures generally cannot be used easily with balanced anaesthetic techniques which involve simultaneous use of hypnotics and analgesics. These same difficulties occur in human subjects, and great efforts have been made to develop monitoring devices that can measure loss of consciousness. The most recently developed have been bispectral index (BIS) monitors (Appadu and Vaidya, 2008), and these are now widely used in human patients, particularly in North America. Initial studies suggest that the instrument may also be of value in animals (Antognini et al., 2000; Lamont et al., 2004; Martin-Cancho et al., 2006). The attraction of this monitor is that it provides a single number as an index of consciousness, or depth of anaesthesia. The disadvantage is that, like the EEG from which it is derived, it is primarily intended to assess the degree of loss of consciousness, and is most predictive when a single anaesthetic agent is used. It is less reliable when using balanced anaesthesia. A further drawback is that it is designed for use in human beings, and the mathematical processing used to create the ‘index’ has been derived from measures made in large numbers of human subjects. Despite these problems, BIS monitors may be of use, particularly for long-term anaesthetic procedures with neuromuscular blockade, but extensive validation for each specific protocol will be needed before these monitors can be relied upon. It is also apparent that BIS values may vary between species at equivalent anaesthetic depths (Lamont et al., 2004).

Given the difficulties of monitoring the level of consciousness in paralysed animals, a more simple approach is to allow the action of the muscle relaxant to subside periodically. The animal will then be capable of responding to painful stimuli with voluntary movements. The degree of neuromuscular blockade can be monitored using a peripheral nerve stimulator. This device delivers a small electrical stimulus, either using skin electrodes or needle electrodes, to a peripheral nerve supplying muscle. In a non-paralysed animal the stimulation causes a muscle twitch. Allowing the actions of the muscle relaxant to subside will not always be practicable, especially during prolonged neurophysiological studies, however it is almost always feasible to delay administration of the relaxant until after the start of the surgical procedure. This allows an initial assessment of the adequacy of the depth of anaesthesia to be obtained. It also avoids difficulties in interpreting changes in heart rate and blood pressure that can occur as a side-effect of administration of some muscle relaxants (Rowlee, 1999; Appadu and Vaidya, 2008).

Decisions as to what constitutes an appropriate depth of anaesthesia, especially in paralysed animals, remains controversial. It has been suggested that very much lighter planes of anaesthesia should be used routinely (Antognini et al., 2005), but this approach does not take account of our current poor knowledge of indicators of consciousness in animals. A more conservative approach (e.g. Drummond et al., 1996) is recommended by most regulatory authorities, scientific journals and is adopted at the author’s own institution.

Many anaesthetic agents depress respiration and this can lead to the production of hypercapnia, hypoxia and acidosis. To maintain blood carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations within normal levels, it is often necessary to assist ventilation. If the thoracic cavity is opened, the normal mechanisms of lung inflation are disrupted and it is usually necessary to ventilate the animal’s lungs artificially. It is not necessary to use a mechanical ventilator provided a suitable anaesthetic breathing system is in use (see Chapter 3), but using a ventilator will often be more convenient than manually assisting ventilation. A mechanical ventilator will often allow the precise control of the duration of inspiration and expiration, the volume of gas delivered to the lungs and the pressure reached in the airway during inspiration. It is not necessary to administer a NMB agent (muscle relaxant, curare-like drug) in order to carry out artificial ventilation but, unless the animal is deeply anaesthetized or is hyperventilated to produce hypocapnia, spontaneous respiratory movements may occur and these may interfere with ventilation and surgery.

When animals are anaesthetized for only a short period, their ability to withstand numerous disruptions to their normal physiology will often enable them to survive even very poor anaesthetic techniques. As the period of anaesthesia is extended, the adverse effects caused by poor technique become increasingly important. Similarly, the undesirable side-effects of many anaesthetic drugs become more apparent and a considerably higher standard of intra-operative care becomes necessary. Long-term anaesthesia is of course an arbitrary term, but here it is used to describe anaesthesia lasting longer than 60minutes.

There is little practical difference between anaesthesia from which the animal will be allowed to recover and that in which the animal will be killed at the end of the procedure. Prolonged, non-recovery anaesthesia, often undertaken to enable the study of physiological mechanisms or drug metabolism, usually requires stable anaesthesia with minimal depression of the various body systems. However, since recovery is not required, cumulative effects of drugs become less important, provided physiological stability can be maintained.