With more than 1 million children younger than 5 years old in the United States receiving anesthesia for surgical procedures and thousands more for diagnostic procedures, the safety of anesthetics in young children is an important public health issue.¹  Concerns about anesthesia affecting the developing brains of young children first emerged following findings of anesthetic agents inducing neuroapoptosis and subsequent behavioral deficits in pre-clinical animal model studies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Anesthetic and Life Support Drugs Advisory Committee specifically convened a meeting to discuss the potential clinical significance of the results of these studies in April 2007.²  This was followed by sponsorship of the Safe Kids initiative by the FDA, which provided initial support for clinical research to address this issue.