On behalf of: Environmental Sustainability Program
Island Health reduced the use of desflurane by 52 percent in 2025, cutting the equivalent of 275 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted from our hospitals in the last year alone. This marks the largest year‑over‑year drop in desflurane emissions in more than 15 years.
Desflurane is a commonly used anesthetic gas but is also a potent contributor to climate change and remains in the atmosphere for up to 14 years after its use. National and regional anesthesia organizations recommend avoiding the use of desflurane due to its well-known environmental effects, cost impacts, and efficacy of alternative anesthetic techniques. Today more than 125 Canadian hospitals and health systems have fully discontinued its use.
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Throughout 2025, an Island Health working group of anesthesiologists and anesthesia assistants led a coordinated effort to engage their peers and build clinical consensus to remove desflurane vaporizers across most operating room sites, making them available by request only. This shift not only reduced emissions, but saved nearly $34,000 in anesthetic gas costs, owing to the lower price and higher efficiency of desflurane's less-polluting alternative, sevoflurane. This change was achieved with no impact to quality or safety.
By operating room site, Royal Jubilee and West Coast General Hospitals achieved the largest year-over-year reductions in 2025, at 74 and 75 percent respectively. Since 2010, Island Health's direct GHG emissions from desflurane have decreased by about 95 percent.
Thank you to everyone involved - and to anesthesia working group leaders Dr. Spencer Holowachuk, Dr. Lauren Zolpys, and Fiona Hughes, and to Dr. Desmond Sweeney, Head of Anesthesiology.