Clinical presentation of suspected malignant hyperthermia during anaesthesia in 402 probands.

As anaesthetists have become more aware of malignant hyperthermia the mortality rate has fallen, but concommitantly the number of dubious and aborted cases has increased. All probands who developed a suspected malignant hyperthermia reaction during anaesthesia and subsequently underwent muscle biopsy were classified according to the clinical presentation. A probability for malignant hyperthermia can be calculated, using the classification, for each type of clinical presentation; this varied from 0.96 to 0.07. Certain clinical features were found to be of more value as predictors than others; these included a high creative kinase and myoglobinuria. The accuracy of prediction depends on a clear contemporaneous description of the clinical events.