Teratogen update: anesthetic agents.

Although many pregnant women undergo anesthesia and many others are occupationally exposed to anesthetics every year, assessment of the teratogenic risk of anesthetic agents in humans must currently be made on the basis of very limited data. Available studies suggest that administration of an anesthetic to a pregnant woman will usually not have a deleterious effect on embryonic or fetal development. The risk of congenital anomalies does not appear to be substantially increased among children of women who have chronic occupational exposure to anesthetic gases during pregnancy, either, but miscarriages may occur more frequently than expected among such women. There is an urgent need for publication of good human epidemiologic and experimental animal studies on the teratogenicity of anesthetics.