Electroencephalographically Controlled Anesthesia in Abdominal Surgery

The primary objective of the surgeon is to lower mortality and morbidity rates. For this reason he is always interested in developments that give promise of attaining this end. In the flush of enthusiasm about some new product or device the tendency is to think in terms of panaceas rather than to maintain a calm point of view and evaluate its true place in one's armamentarium. It is too early to classify the subject of this presentation, electroencephalographically controlled anesthesia in abdominal surgery. There is no field in medicine that the surgeon has followed with more interest and no specialty on which he has been more dependent than anesthesiology. Due credit must go to those physicians in active practice, physiologists and others in related basic science fields and those connected with pharmaceutical organizations, whose collective contributions since use of the first crude anesthetic agent have brought anesthesia to the present