Anesthesiology · Interdisciplinary Intensive Care

Surgery Without Pain

With the term ”general anesthesia” one designates the sleep-resembling condition relating to the whole body. The anesthesia is equivalent to a guidance-controlled, and at anytime reversible disconnection of consciousness and the pain experience. Here one makes a distinction between general anesthesia, local anesthesia, and regional anesthesia. During the anesthesia, the anesthesia team has the job of controlling the function of the heart and circulation, the lungs, brain, kidneys, liver, and muscles and to avoid any trouble resp. promptly recognizing and correcting it. Certain operations involve blood loss that needs to be replaced either during or right after the surgery. For patients who have a longer time in advance for planning their surgeries– such as in artificial hip and knee replacements - there is the possibility of using their own donated blood. Surgically contingent pain is suppressed with the help of a thin, barely noticeable ”pain catheter” (leg plexus catheter, arm plexus catheter, peridural catheter, spinal catheter) that is inserted before the operation.

Conduct Before Anesthesia

For your own safety and in order to avoid unnecessary incidents, please observe the following rules of conduct before your anesthesia:

• After 11 PM on the day before the operation, adults should not eat or drink anything anymore. The exception is a swallow of water that you will take with the preparation pill you will receive about an hour before your surgery. You may also take important medication – after conferring with your anesthesiologist.
• Smoking should be discontinued as soon as possible on the day before surgery, so that the red blood cells will have more room for oxygen transport.
• Please remove any make-up or fingernail polish on the day of anesthesia. Jewelry and watch are best left at home or can be given to the ward nurses.
• Contact lenses and glasses should also be left on the ward, unless an extreme ametropia makes wearing glasses indispensable.
• You must inform your anesthesiologists about any tooth defects, loose teeth, crowns, and dentures. Please take out your dental prosthesis.

The Day of Surgery – Before and After the Anesthesia

On the day of surgery, you will receive on the ward, a tranquilizer with a little swallow of water about an hour before the anesthesia. Then you will be transported in your bed to the operating room and transferred to a wheeled surgical gurney and brought into the anesthesia prep room. Here the preparations for the anesthesia will be carried out by the anesthesia team and the anesthetic administered by the anesthesiologist. The heart’s activity will be monitored with an ECG during the complete anesthesia by electrodes that are attached to your chest. A blood pressure cuff on your upper arm measures automatically your blood pressure at regular intervals, and a sensor on your finger monitors the circulation and oxygen concentration of the blood. A catheter will be inserted in a vein on the lower arm or on the back of the hand and connected to a drip. Through this cannula, medications can also be administered.