Monoamine oxidase inhibitors and cardiac anesthesia revisited

There are well-recognized adverse interactions between the monoamine oxidase inhibitors and anesthetic drugs, particularly narcotics. Patients having cardiopulmonary bypass procedures are commonly anesthetized using high-dose narcotic techniques. We describe an uneventful perioperative course in a parkinsonian patient who required urgent coronary artery bypass graft surgery while he was taking selegiline, a selective inhibitor of monoamine oxidase type B.