Question

100. Anesthesia

Answer 1

Anesthesia

It is a state of controlled temporary loss of sensation, induced for medical purpose. It includes analgesia, paralysis, amnesia and unconsciousness. Patient under the effect of anesthetic is named as being anesthetized.

Anesthesia is a painless procedure compared to unanesthetized patient. They have severe and intolerable pain. Anesthesia mainly divided into three categories. They are,

General anesthesia

Sedation

Local anaesthesia

General anesthesia: it suppress the central nervous system activity. They lead to unconsciousness and lack of sensation. The general anaesthetics either inhaled or injected drugs.

In sedation they suppress the central nervous system to a small extend. They inhibit anxiety and creation of long time memory without the cause of unconsciousness.

Local anaesthesia: In this case they block the conduction of nerve impulse from a particular region of the body. The drug used according to the condition, this may be used either on it's own or used as combination with general anesthesia or sedation. The drugs targeted to the peripheral nerves to anesthetize the isolated region of the body.

Eg: Numbing a tooth for dental work

Nerve block used to inhibit sensation in an entire limb.

In some cases epidural or spinal anaesthesia should be carried out in the central nervous system region. They suppress all incoming sensation from nerves.

There are different types of anesthetics are used for this purpose, it includes general anaesthetics, local anaesthetic, sedatives, adjuncts, narcotics, neuromuscular blocking agents etc.

Risk and complications

During and after anesthesia use , there are many risk and complications can be occur. They are related with patient health, complexity of the procedure and anesthetic technique. Patient health status is the main think. Perioperative risk includes, heart attack, pulmonary embolism, death are the major risk . Minor risk includes postoperative nausea, vomiting and sometimes it leads to re hospitalization. Local anesthetic toxicity, malignant hyperthermia and airway trauma are the other causes.

Stages of anesthesia

Stage of analgesia: It is the first stage, the anesthesia begins at this stage. Initiation of general anesthesia to loss of consciousness occurs at this stage.

Stage of delirium: loss of consciousness to automatic breathing occurs at this stage.

Stage of surgical anesthesia: here automatic respiration to respiratory paralysis occur. It is divided into five planes.

Stage of medullary paralysis: stops the respiration till death. Overdose cause medullary paralysis, vasomotor collapse and respiratory arrest.