Outpatient surgery has recently grown in popularity. This trend has affected the practice of anesthesia and has also led to an increasing interest in the development and use of short-acting anesthetic and analgesic agents.

One hundred fifty patients scheduled for outpatient surgery were randomly allocated to receive propofol, sevoflurane or isoflurane anesthesia with tracheal intubation. Clinical recovery times were analyzed as emergence, recovery, cognition and discharge. All adverse events were noted.

Sevoflurane resulted in significantly shorter times to emergence (2.9 min), recovery (4 min), cognition (5.5 min) and discharge (13.4 min) than isoflurane. Propofol resulted in shorter times to emergence (2 min), recovery (2 min), cognition (3 min) and discharge (6.6 min) than isoflurane, but these were not significant. Also, sevoflurane resulted in shorter times to emergence, recovery, cognition and discharge than propofol, but not significantly. Among the adverse events noted, the percentages of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) after anesthesia were 8%, 20% and 24% for the those who received propofol, sevoflurane and isoflurane, respectively. Propofol resulted in a significantly lower incidence of PONV than sevoflurane or isoflurane. There was no significant difference between sevoflurane and isoflurane in this respect.

Sevoflurane and propofol are better anesthetics than isoflurane for outpatient anesthesia because of their rapid recovery times and a lower incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting.