Journal of Surgery and Anesthesia

Role of Anesthesia during General Surgery

Catherine Samra^* Department of Anesthesiology, Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia
^*Correspondence: Catherine Samra, Department of Anesthesiology, Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia, Email:

Received: 08-Sep-2021 Published: 29-Sep-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2684-1606.21.5.e158

Description

General anesthesia is medicine given to a patient before any type of surgery to make the given person to sleep and prevent the person from feeling pain. There are three main types of Anesthetics, general anesthesia is one among them which is used for major surgeries and the other two types are Local anesthesia, which is given before minor surgeries which reduces pain sensation in small and focused areas of the body but the person is in conscious state. Regional Anesthesia, this numbs the entire body parts and there are two forms of regional anesthesia spinal anesthetic is used for lower limb and abdomen surgeries which is injected into the lower back and numbs the lower body, and the other type is epidural anesthesia is used to reduce the pain of the childbirth and lower limb surgery and is injected it near the spinal cord. Propofol (Diprivan) is the most commonly used general anesthetic works as an interrupting nerve which supplies the anesthetic drug into your brain as it crosses Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) which prevents the brain to recognize pain and fails to memorize what happened during your surgery. Generally aesthesia is given to the patients through IV route so that drug can directly enters into a vein or anesthesia can also be given in nasal route to the patient through a mask, both of the routes of administrations shows rapid onset of action. Patient will become unconscious within a couple of minutes after administration.

During surgery, the anesthesia team will check breathing, temperature, heart rate, fluid levels, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level to the patient to adjust their medications or to give you more fluids or blood if incase any emergency is needed. General anesthesia is most commonly used for complicated operations like knee and hip replacement, heart surgery, and surgical procedure related to cancer, many of the surgeries are lifesaving or life-changing which cannot be possible without general anesthesia. The patient might feel some of the side effects like drowsiness, sore throat, itching, dry mouth, muscle ache, nausea and vomiting, shivering, and confusion (especially observed in older people) after the administration of anesthesia. These effects are rare but some people may suffer with confusion for a few days after the surgery and this condition is called delirium which usually goes away about a week. Some people may be troubled with memory loss after taking general anesthesia which is most commonly seen in a patient with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and lung diseases. General anesthesia is far safe for healthy people. The actual time of elimination of an anesthetic drug is 24-48 hours. Patient should clearly monitor and in observation until the drug completely eliminated from the body. Local anesthesia has short duration of action than the general action. General anesthesia is safe for most of the people but it may carry a greater chance of complications if the patient is obese and have obstructive sleep apnea which causes breathing to pause while sleep and are allergic. It is rare but the can still awake after general anesthesia and can feel pain during the surgery which may further long lasting problems.