Their aquatic nature and skin permeability make
amphibian anesthesia very similar to fish anesthesia in
methodology and drugs used (Stetter, 2001). The anesthetic
compounds are most commonly delivered in
water and absorbed across the animal’s gills or skin.
Inhalant anesthetic agents are delivered into a chamber
containing the animal or bubbled into the water, but
this is often a time-consuming process. Although there
are some published dosages of injectable anesthetic
agents, in the author’s experience these are often unreliable,
have a very low margin of safety, may be associated
with a prolonged recovery, and dosages are very species
specific (Stetter, 2001; Wright and Whitaker, 2001;
Crawshaw, 2003).