Abstract
Abstract Anesthesia, a critical component of modern surgery, enables painless operations while preserving vital physiological functions. The field of anesthesia has evolved from rudimentary monitoring techniques, such as observing patient vitals, to sophisticated methods integrating advanced technology. Despite these advances, current methods often rely on indirect indicators of drug concentration, leading to challenges in maintaining optimal anesthetic levels. Real-time monitoring of anesthetic drug concentrations is essential for effective patient care, particularly with the use of anesthetic cocktails tailored to individual needs. The major cocktail used in anesthesia protocol is a mixture of propofol, fentanyl and midazolam. During anesthesia, a cocktail of these drugs is often used to achieve optimal sedation and analgesia, necessitating precise control and monitoring of these drugs to optimize the dose for each patient. Emerging electrochemical biosensors offer promising solutions by providing direct, real-time measurements of these anesthetic drug concentrations. Even though, the volatile anesthetics have been generally used in a significant majority of anesthetic procedures worldwide, this review focuses exclusively on monitoring of intravenous anesthetic drugs. This article discusses the history, current techniques, electrochemical sensors developed for propofol, fentanyl and midazolam followed by anticipated future advances in anesthetic monitoring. This article concludes that while current monitoring methods have significantly advanced patient safety, the future of anesthesia monitoring lies in the continued evolution and implementation of real-time, direct anesthetic drug measurement technologies by the help of electrochemical sensing devices.