Low minimum alveolar concentration alarm: a standard for prevention of awareness during general anaesthesia maintained by inhalational anaesthetics.

Awareness during general anaesthesia is a rare but significant problem that can be frightening to the patients. We suggest that newer generation monitors should include this facility to provide a low alarm limit to MAC settings so as to improve the quality of patient care. Also we suggest that a "near empty" alarm be incorporated into vaporizers which can warn the anaesthesiologist prior to development of possible light plane of anaesthesia. We hope that adopting these two features can help enhance patient safety and can further aid in quality assurance.