Surgical anaesthesia usually requires hypnosis, antinociception (ensuring blood pressure and heart rate control) and immobility with varying degrees of muscle relaxation. However, the relative contribution of these three components to the state of anaesthesia may vary between different anaesthesias and surgical procedures. While volatile anaesthetics may be used to produce anaesthesia in and by themselves, most often anaesthesia is produced by a combination of drugs. Anaesthesia produced by the concomitant use of hypnotics, analgesics and neuromuscular blocking drugs is called "balanced anaesthesia".The degree of neuromuscular block induced by neuromuscular blocking drugs and the depth of anaesthesia (induced by other drugs) both affect muscle relaxation [1] . While in the early days of our profession deep ether anaesthesia alone provided sufficient muscle relaxation for many procedures, the introduction of neuromuscular blocking drugs nowadays allows us to specifically target specific degrees of muscle relaxation in an easy and safe manner. Provided the airway is secured and adequate ventilation and hypnosis are ensured, adverse effects of neuromuscular blocking drugs are few.After briefly reviewing pertinent physiology, the different degrees of neuromuscular block depth are defined and the tools to measure them are described. The chapter then focuses on the properties of modern neuromuscular blocking drugs (only cisatracurium, mivacurium, and rocuronium will be discussed) and suxamethonium. Finally, the clinically optimal neuromuscular block is defined, and the different routes to achieve this goal are explored.
Neuromuscular junctionAn action potential causes synaptic vesicles of the motor nerve endings containing the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to fuse with the plasma membrane and release their content into the neuromuscular junction. Acetylcholine then binds to postjunctional nicotinic acetylcholine receptors on the motor endplate. These receptors consist of two alpha and one beta, delta and epsilon subunits. They are directly linked to ion channels. If acetylcholine is bound to both alpha