Patients usually experience circadian rhythm disorders postoperatively such as sleep deprivation and sleep disturbance. Recent studies have suggested that general anesthetics by themselves may induce these complications through influencing the biological clock. Summing up those animal researches, this paper discover that general anesthetics can alter the expression of circadian genes, which may be related to their effects on special neuron receptors located in hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). What is more, circadian rhythm is also disturbed after general anesthesia, typically as behavioral rhythm,although there were many inconsistent outcomes among these studies. As many and complex factors can effect biorhythm (e.g.,both environmental factors and artificial factors are likely to have an impact), this paper holds that well‑designed experiments and further mechanical studies are needed on general anesthetics, circadian genes and biorhythms in the future. With the solution of these problems,there will be a new idea for prevention and treatment of circadian rhythm disorders after general anesthesia.