Editorial

Anaesthesia and the sex-linked dystrophies: between a rock and a hard place In this issue of the British Journal of Anaesthesia, Poole and colleagues1 report on a case with a successful outcome after prolonged resuscitation after a cardiac arrest affecting an apparently healthy 12-yr-old boy within 10 min of completion of an elective circumcision. The cardiac arrest was caused by hyperkalaemia secondary to rhabdomyolysis. Subsequent genetic investigation revealed the underlying disorder to be Becker’s muscular dystro-phy, the less aggressive form (compared with Duchenne’s dystrophy) of the sex-linked disorders that result in a deficiency of dystrophin in the glycoprotein matrix that maintains the integrity of the plasma membranes of striated muscle. This is not the first case of its type to be reported,2 bu