Life Cycle Analysis of Anaesthetic Agents

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)

• Evaluates the environmental impact of a product over its entire life cycle.
• Holistic approach that takes into account all the activities involved in the creation of a product
  • Material extraction
  • Manufacturing
  • Transportation
  • Distribution
  • Use
  • Disposal
• Quantifies and compares the ecological footprint of various inhalational and intravenous anaesthetics

Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Anesthetic Drugs

• Sherman et al undertook LCAs for 5 common anaesthetic agents
  • Sevoflurane
  • Desflurane
  • Isoflurane
  • Nitrous oxide
  • Propofol
• Desflurane accounted for the largest life cycle GHG impact
  • 15 times that of isoflurane
  • 20 times that of sevoflurane
• GHG impacts of propofol are comparatively quite small, nearly 4 orders of magnitude lower than those of desflurane or nitrous oxide.
• Using nitrous oxide as a carrier gas significantly increases the GHG all drugs
• Inhalation anesthetics are greenhouse gases and the life cycle GHG emissions include waste anesthetic gases vented to the atmosphere and emissions that arise from other life cycle stages.
• GHG impacts of propofol primarily stem from the electricity required for the syringe pump and not from drug production or direct release to the environment.