A couple of centuries ago, before the operation the patients were given opium, cocaine, henbane, alcohol, or marijuana. In the 13th century, some doctors thought that ear wax of a dog, combined with tar, causes sleep. Other patients are “lucky” even more doctors they clamped the artery that supplies blood to the brain. As a result people for a few minutes lost consciousness, and during that time you had to have time to operate. Well, the most fortunate of the specialists who knew how hard and where to hit the patient on the head, he passed out, but not dead.
Since anesthesia is very different, but anesthesiologists say that many still fear him more than the surgery itself. And all because of the harmful and enduring myths, it’s time to say goodbye:
Myth 1: During anesthesia can Wake up and feel as you cut.
In General, the probability of the anesthesia not work, but it is not more than 0.2%. Is just an individual reaction to the drug even the most effective medicine can not cure 100% of patients. Always remains 1%, which it will not help.
If during surgery it appears that you enter the same “unlucky” percentage, the anesthesiologist would know. The heart, pressure, pulse, body temperature, brain activity – everything is under constant supervision of a specialist. Even minimal deviations from the norm, the anesthesia will immediately adjust.
Perhaps this myth is so popular because anesthesiologists sometimes “release” patients from sleep when the doctors had finished the operation, but still impose bandage, disconnect the patient from the apparatus, etc. Some patients hear voices, doctors, and think that they woke up during the operation the surgeon.
Myth 2: Anesthesia takes 5 years of life.
Singer cher, now 71 years old, but she is credited with more than a hundred plastic surgeries. If at least half of them were done under General anesthesia, it turns out, technically, cher was… 321 years.
People carry dozens of anesthesia and live to old age – there are many examples. Another thing is that by itself, the operation is one of the most severe stresses to the body. Frequent surgical intervention can actually lead to serious complications and shorten the life.
Myth 3: because of the anesthesia become addicted.
This is only possible if the patient is in a critical condition, many times it was introduced into anesthesia and several weeks after surgery was given narcotic analgesics. And it is unlikely.
Myth 4: From anesthesia can not Wake up.
The chance of dying from anesthesia is about 1 in 20,000. The exact figure depends on the level of medicine in the country: Zimbabwe dies in 1 patient out of 350, in Europe 1 out of 250 thousand. In General, the probability of dying from anesthesia is several times lower than, for example, the chances of dying in a car accident on the way to the hospital.
Myth 5: Anesthesia destroys health. Including, mental.
Modern anesthetics are no serious side effects. May appear nausea, dizziness and vomiting, but these symptoms are removed by medicines. And even after General anaesthesia for a few weeks may worsen memory, but you won’t notice because the violations will be minimal. About how, after alcohol.
With regard to mental disorders, they are extremely rare, mostly in older people or those who are so prone to psychopathology: for example, alcoholics and drug addicts. Hallucinations and bouts of aggression too will not be – the preparations which they were called, remained in the last century.