One Health and "opioid free anesthesia" concept

The concept of "One Health" considers that living organisms and ecosystems are interconnected and cultivates the idea of promoting exchanges between human and veterinary medicine. In human medicine, the "opioid crisis" in the 2010s led to the emergence of a strategy called "Opioid Free Anesthesia." Based on the use of alpha2 agonists and/or local-regional anesthesia techniques, this strategy aims to reduce the use of opioids. Since the 1980s, veterinary medicine has been using alpha2 agonists as sedatives and analgesics and has accumulated various data useful for cross-disciplinary exchanges between the two fields of medicine. Recent observations in human medicine regarding the cardiocirculatory effects of these drugs appear to be consistent with those previously observed in veterinary medicine. In return, the therapeutic contributions of local-regional anesthesia are well documented in human medicine and could help optimize veterinary practices. Thus, considering the subtle interspecies differences, modern anesthesiology perfectly illustrates the idea of "One Health, One Medicine."