Will surgery under general anesthesia make people stupid? Is it true that there are many side effects?

Before the advent of anesthesia, surgeons had to complete the operation as quickly as possible to shorten the patient's pain. In ancient times, opium poppy, mandrake, alcohol, Ma Fei San, Tong Xian San, etc. were all tried for anesthesia.

The emergence of ether anesthesia in modern times marks the beginning of the exploration of safe and effective anesthesia methods and anesthetic drugs by pharmaceutical chemists and clinicians. However, some patients who have undergone general anesthesia believe that they have become stupid. How did they experience general anesthesia?

0 1 The process of general anesthesia

The day before surgery: The anesthesiologist will generally conduct a preoperative visit the day before surgery to determine possible risk factors during the operation and develop an anesthesia plan for the next day.

On the day of surgery: The anesthesiologist always arrives at the operating room early, debugs and checks the normal operation of anesthesia-related equipment, prepares medicines and supplies, and communicates with the patient to relieve the patient's tension.

The patient's body will then experience:

Induction period: Sedatives and hypnotics help the patient to lose consciousness, analgesics make the pain disappear, and muscle relaxants are responsible for muscle relaxation. The combined effects of several drugs bring the patient into a state of anesthesia.

Maintenance period: At this time, the patient looks like he is "asleep". The anesthesiologist will stay by the patient's side to ensure that the patient does not suffer from hypoxia and is in an anesthetized state, and that the body remains "balanced" without any problems. If there are any critical situations during the operation, the anesthesiologist will also take charge of the overall situation and quickly carry out rescue and resuscitation work.

Recovery period: The anesthesiologist stops administering the anesthetic drugs, and the anesthetic drugs are metabolized in the body. After the patient wakes up, the anesthesiologist will not leave immediately in order to detect and deal with abnormal situations in time.

0 2Will general anesthesia make people stupid?

In fact, after more than a hundred years of development, modern anesthesia has developed various types of precision anesthesia instruments and many new short-acting anesthetic drugs that are metabolized quickly and leave no residue. With the clinical application of these technologies and the increasingly systematic and standardized training of anesthesiologists, the safety of clinical anesthesia has been greatly improved . In recent years, the domestic intraoperative anesthesia mortality rate has dropped to less than one in 100,000, and the incidence rate is even lower in large tertiary hospitals.

According to the results of a large-sample epidemiological study of people over the age of 3, no damage to the brain has been found with general anesthesia. Generally, general anesthetics are completely metabolized in the body within a few days or even hours, making it difficult for them to have a lasting effect on our brain.

However, big data shows that there is a "333 principle" for children under the age of 3, that is, if a child under the age of 3 undergoes more than 3 surgeries, each of which lasts more than 3 hours, it may affect the child's memory and cognition. Therefore, if it is not an emergency or time-limited surgery, it is recommended that children over the age of 3 undergo surgical treatment.

0 3General anesthesia has many side effects, so try not to use it?

In fact, anesthetic drugs are very short-acting. These short-acting drugs are metabolized quickly and have almost no effect on the body.

Some people who are prone to motion sickness and young women may experience nausea and vomiting after surgery, but after preoperative evaluation by the anesthesiologist, certain measures can be taken to prevent it.

0 4 Is it possible to talk nonsense after general anesthesia ?

This condition is professionally called delirium . Some patients may experience delirium during the anesthesia recovery period when the drugs have not been completely metabolized and consciousness has not fully recovered. Apart from the possibility of causing a "social death" scene, it is not a big problem as long as they wake up.

END

Reference sources: West China Doctors, Science Popularization China, Tencent Medical Dictionary