1. general anesthesia is the only safe method to achieve a sufficiently good
anesthesia in small children.
2. as to the studies you mentioned, there are two things: 1) only repeated
anesthesia is linked to increased risk 2) they are based on patients done
something ~30 years ago. the drugs used are different now, as well as
monitoring and etc. so it is not clear whether the results from those
studies can be translated into today's situation.
