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Devices designed to vaporize and add a controlled amount of anesthetic agent to the gas mixture delivered to an individual through an anesthesia unit. Vaporizers are usually installed in the low-pressure circuit of the anesthesia system to inject the liquid anesthetic agent after the gases pass the control valve and flowmeter. These devices may consist of: (1) a variable bypass type vaporizer (the stream of gas is split into bypass gas which does not enter the vaporizing chamber and carrier gas which flows over the liquid agent), or (2) heated blender vaporizer (the anesthetic agent is evaporated using heat and pressurized to a high pressure); another option (3) is to \'inject\' the anesthetic agent directly into the fresh gas flow coming from the flow meters (direct injection vaporizers). Dedicated vaporizers intended for use with only one anesthetic agent (e.g., isoflurane, desflurane, sevoflurane) are also available. Anesthesia vaporizers are needed because the inhaled anesthetic agents (except nitrous oxide N2O) exist as liquids at room temperature and sea-level pressure; they are intended to add anesthetic vapor into the gas flow in a way that the output of the system delivers the set concentration of anesthetic agent accurately.
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