A New Orleans doctor has adapted a machine used by the petrochemical industry to analyze petroleum gases for research toward solving a medical mystery in anesthesia.
Dr. Frank Summers, a member of the anesthetic staff at Charity hospital, anounced at the fifth annual meeting of the Association of University Anesthetists here Saturday that he is using the machine to analyze anesthetic gases in the lungs and blood.
The 30-year-old doctor, along with the other 61 association members meeting in the Louisiana State university medical center, is seeking to solve the mystery of how anesthesia works. The reason anesthesia takes effect or the parts of the body affected during the process are not now known, the doctor said.
Dr. Summers said that the extremely sensitive gas ehro-matograph machine allows analysis of minute quantities of gases and enables researchers to analyze mixtures of gases simultaneously.
First Use in Medicine
