6.5. Clinical implications

The fast early recovery that was seen among general anaesthesia patients has increased the use of inhalational anaesthesia. At the same time, the connection between TNS and lidocaine has modified the ambulatory anaesthesia practice into the same direction. An optimal short-acting local anaesthetic to replace lidocaine spinal anaesthesia is still needed. Inhalational anaesthesia with a laryngeal mask has been the popular practical choice in ambulatory knee arthroscopy during the last few years. Isoflurane inhalation anaesthesia is still competitive compared to the new general anaesthetics in terms of cost-effectiveness and patient satisfaction, because the results of the present study equal the findings in the literature, where late recovery has been shown to depend very little on the general anaesthetic used (Alhashemi et al. 1997, Jakobsson et al. 1997, Ries et al. 1999, Heidvall et al. 2000).