Introduction Volatile inhaled anesthetics are commonly used for general anesthesia worldwide because of their fast action and easy management. However, there is accumulating evidence indicating that general anesthetics that activate gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) receptors induce widespread apoptosis at a clinically relevant concentration in the developing brain of rodents [1, 2, 3]. Furthermore, anesthetic administration in children causes long-term impairments of cognitive behavior later in adulthood [4, 5, 6], raising concerns about the clinical use of general anesthetics in pediatric medicine. Long term cognitive dysfunction after neonatal anesthetic exposure has been reported in the behavioral experiments using rodents. They includes
