Effect of age on minimum alveolar concentration

Comparison of fitted lines with published values. Solid lines = fitted values, from 1 to 80 years, for each anesthetic as a whole, based on data for age >1 year; dashed lines = extrapolation to age 0. The bias and extra scatter of published values about these extrapolations draw attention to their invalidity. A 10 times expanded time scale has been used for ages >1 year to separate the many published values in that age range. The circles are used for alternate anesthetics. Five agents are omitted to avoid cluttering the diagram: for each agent, only a single estimate of MAC was available and the fitted line necessarily went through that value.