IMR Press / FBL / Volume 13 / Issue 10 / DOI: 10.2741/2958

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Perioperative cell-mediated immune response
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1 Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Unit, Campus Virchow-Klinikum and Campus Charité Mitte, CharitéUniversity Hospital Berlin , Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353 Berlin, Germany

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2008, 13(10), 3676–3684; https://doi.org/10.2741/2958
Published: 1 May 2008
Abstract

Innate and acquired immunity play a pivotal role in the host defense response. Pain, surgical stress, tissue injury and invasive micro-organisms are known to modulate complex immune responses in patients undergoing major surgery, which can lead to subsequent increased susceptibility to postoperative infections. Anesthetics may influence the immune response indirectly through modulation of the neurohumoral response or directly by acting on immune competent cells. In particular, cell-mediated immune balance seems to be affected by anesthetics and this might account for anesthetic-dependant risk of postoperative infections. Consequently, in order to fully understand the immunomodulating properties and ensuing clinical relevance of anesthetics it will be necessary to investigate each agent individually and in a variety of clinical settings. The existing research in this field, most of which is experimental, has yielded different results. The goal of further clinical studies must be to establish the immunomodulating properties of individual anesthetic agents so that selection can be tailored to the individual patient's pre-operative immune status and intraoperative course.

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