A wide variety of amplitude- or phase-modulated pulses, which are designed for selective excitation, inversion or refocusing, are severely perturbed by radiation damping effects in the presence of a large macroscopic magnetization. A general method is presented to compensate for radiation damping during the application of selective radiofrequency pulses. This method, which has general applicability for any amplitude- or frequency-modulated radiofrequency pulse, is demonstrated exptl. for inversion pulses. [on SciFinder (R)]