Muscle relaxants

There are the tools that block neuromuscular synapses, thus causing skeletal muscle relaxation. Therefore, they are called muscle relaxants. A more accurate term is peripherally acting muscle relaxants that are known as centrally acting (eg, benzodiazepines).

Muscle relaxants are used mainly in surgical practice during operations that require a relaxation of skeletal muscles. Earlier, in operations used relaxant action of inhalational anesthesia was used. First the inhalatory anesthesia analgesia is used, which “switches”consciousness, and only at higher concentrations skeletal muscles relaxes. Today, anesthesia is combined with muscle relaxants.

The first of the known muscle relaxants was poison curare. South American Indians smeared it with poison tips of hunting arrows. Once it is in the body of the animal, curare causes paralysis skeletal muscles and the animal loses the ability to move (the meat of animals is suitable for food, as curare is practically not absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract).

In 1942 the Canadian Anesthesiologist HR Griffith and his assistant G.E. Johnson used the purified preparation of curare to relax skeletal muscles during surgery.

In future, the plants would be used for the manufacture of curare: tubocurarine would be isolated from alkaloid, which would begin to produce in the form of the drug.

Currently, tubocurarine is used relatively infrequently due to its side effects.

Muscle relaxants peripherally are mainly used in surgical operations, that require skeletal muscle relaxation.