General anesthesia renders a person unconscious during surgery and other major medical procedures. This is both to avoid pain and to block out the memory of the operation. Although being anesthetized is generally called “being asleep,” the patient is actually in a different state. Unlike local and regional anesthesia, which acts on the nerve receptors that receive pain signals from the brain, general anesthesia turns off the brain itself, so that it isn’t able to send any signals at all. The anesthesia is usually a combination of intravenous drugs and various inhaled gases. Besides these anesthetic agents, the process also involves controlling the patient’s breathing and pulse and monitoring vital functions throughout ...

An epidural is a type of regional anesthesia, a drug that numbs a large area of the body. In this case, the numbness extends from the waist down. Its most common use is during normal labor and childbirth, although it is also used for other deliveries such as induced labor, vacuum delivery, and caesarean sections. Epidural anesthesia is optional; some women choose not to get it for safety or personal reasons. Some doctors recommend using an epidural only in cases of extreme pain or when complications arise that require surgery. In normal deliveries, the pain serves as the signal for the mother to push, so an epidural can actually prolong the process. The ...

Anesthesia works by blocking off the nervous system in some way so that a person feels numb or stays unconscious during surgery. An additional purpose can also be to help the patient relax before the surgery and block memories of it afterwards. There are three main types of anesthesia, according to scope: local, general, and regional. Local anesthesia, as the name suggests, affects only a specific part of the body, such as a patch of skin or a limb. The person stays awake during the surgery, but they may be given strong sedatives to help limit movement. This type lasts only up to a few hours and is used in out-patient surgery, ...

Anesthesia has been used in surgery for more than a century. But while decades of innovation have made it reliably efficient, they have yet to smooth out a few quirks, not least being the numerous side effects. Not everyone will experience adverse symptoms after being put under, but the possibility cannot be brushed aside. Luckily, most anesthesia side effects are minor. General weakness, headache, and body ache are normal, as the body is still getting used to having sensation back. If a tube was used to administer the drug or to aid in breathing, the patient may have a dry throat upon waking up, which may develop into strep throat later on. ...

We are going to focus on the three aspects which, to our understanding, are most appealing. Please remember to read the clarifications made under the “Legal Warning” section at the end of the article. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS • Anaesthesiology is the field of Medicine which deals with pain treatment and integral care of the surgical patient before, during and after surgery. Apart from the above-mentioned fields of action, our speciality currently includes others, namely pain treatment, critical medical profiles and extrahospital or intrahospital emergencies. • Our duties inside the operating theatre go beyond anaesthetizing patients, mainly consisting of protecting and regulating their vital signs, in order for the surgical intervention to cause them the least possible alterations. In fact it is us, the ...