What is the safest method of anesthesia?

What is the safest method of anesthesia?

That's a difficult question. In the 70's when the complication rate for anesthesia was 1 in 10,000, it was reported that the complication rate was similar for general and regional anesthesia, so it didn't matter what type of anesthetic you got as the complication rate was the same. In this era, it is hard to judge which anesthetic is safest. The older, sicker patients tend to have their procedures done under local with sedation or regional anesthesia, if possible. The morbidly obese have general anesthetics almost all of the time because of the technical difficulties of performing regional anesthesia. I don't know if the statistics are valid because the sicker patients tend to have one type of anesthesia and will by definition have more complications and a higher mortality rate. That being said, the safest anaesthetic is the one that the anaesthesiologist is most comfortable in delivering to that particular patient with his medical history taken into account.