Pharmacogenetic Aspects of Anesthesia and Postoperative Anesthetization

Surgery is the most common and predictable source of severe pain. Untreated postoperative pain may result in adverse psychological and physiological effects that increase morbidity and mortality, thereby compromising the quality of recovery. The general analgesic effect is not unilateral, but is influenced by a number of genes affecting different pathways of drug metabolism. This is why its successful management requires the provision of anesthesia and analgesia without adverse side effects. Pharmacogenetics in anesthesiology has the potential to improve pain management by predicting the individual response to a particular drug prior to starting therapy and is therefore able to improve the therapeutic course of anesthesia and subsequent treatment.