General anesthesia combined with modern volatile anesthetics for use in cardiac surgery correlated with fewer deaths and less postoperative pulmonary and other complications, when compared with total IV anesthesia (TIVA).
That was the finding from a literature review of 68 randomized controlled trials that included 7,104 patients. In noncardiac surgery, however, volatile anesthetics were not linked to lower rates of complications.
The review was conducted by the Pulmonary Engineering Group, a