Vibrational absorption and circular dichroism spectra of desflurane have been measured in chloroform solution in the 2000-900 cm(-1) region. These spectra are compared with the ab initio predictions of absorption and VCD spectra obtained with density functional theory using B3LYP/6-31G* and B3PW91/6-311G(2d) basis sets for different conformers of desflurane. These results confirm the assignment of the (R) configuration to (-)-desflurane and suggest that three different conformers of desflurane are responsible for the observed spectral features in the solution phase.