The Most Popular Myths About Anesthesia

Anesthesia leads to serious complications. You may not wake up after anesthesia. Under anesthesia, a person has erotic dreams. Anesthesia may be interrupted during surgery.

Anesthesia is an integral component of most surgical operations. Fears of anesthesia are largely related to common myths about anesthesia, which we tried to dispel in this article.

Myth 1: Anesthesia leads to serious complications

Indeed, when anesthesiology was just being born, anesthesia led to complications in 60-70% of cases. Today, complications from anesthesia are observed only in 1-2% of cases. As a rule, the appearance of complications is associated with allergic reactions to the drugs that are administered. The most dangerous complication of narcosis can be considered anaphylactic shock, which occurs only 1 time in 10 thousand cases. Here a lot depends on the anesthesiologist. If it is an experienced specialist, then the probability of developing complications is reduced to zero.

The development of side effects is possible already after anesthesia. Some patients experience malaise, nausea, dizziness and vomiting. However, these are temporary phenomena that disappear within a few hours.

Myth 2: You can't wake up after anesthesia

Unfortunately, deaths do happen during operations. However, the vast majority of deaths are not related to the effects of narcotic drugs. As a rule, the cause of death is a force majeure situation or a human factor. We must admit that we do not have enough qualified anesthesiologists. And an overworked anesthesiologist can make a fatal mistake during an operation.

Myth 3: Under anesthesia, a person will have erotic dreams

A few dozen years ago, such a phenomenon really took place due to the use of the narcotic substance sombrevin. However, today this drug is prohibited for anesthesia. However, they began to ban it not at all because of erotic visions, but because sombrevin causes allergic reactions and a number of other serious complications.

Myth 4: Anesthesia can be interrupted during surgery

Theoretically, this is possible, but an experienced anesthesiologist selects drugs for anesthesia based on the patient's weight and a number of other features of his body. With the help of automatic dispensers, medications are administered into the patient's bloodstream during surgery. At the same time, the equipment monitors the number of drug users and certain adjustments are made in case of deviation from the norm.

Myth 5: Anesthesia does not work if a person is intoxicated

Despite the fact that this is a myth, there are real grounds for such a statement. The whole point is that when drinking alcoholic beverages, some drugs are removed from the body in an accelerated mode. This also applies to drugs used for anesthesia. This means that an intoxicated person may need an additional amount of medication to induce deep anesthesia.