Developing a quality improvement project to tackle the desflurane problem.

Anaesthesia is associated with the routine use of volatile anaesthetic agents, all of which are potent greenhouse gases in varying degrees. Desflurane, in particular, has a high global warming potential and in recent years, there has been a global movement to reduce or remove its usage entirely from operating theatres. We work in a large tertiary teaching hospital in Singapore with deeply entrenched practices of using desflurane to facilitate high turnover of operating theatre cases.