hi I'm dr. you I'm a facial plastic
surgeon here in Beverly Hills and today
I'd like to talk about general
anesthesia general anesthesia is kind of
this gray mysterious black box for a lot
of patients and potential patients
I'd like to demystify a few of the
commonly held misconceptions by
enlisting the help of one of my
colleagues dr. Cohen is an amazing
board-certified anesthesiologist over 40
years of experience here are some of the
things that he has to hopefully
enlighten you on that subject today
we're going to talk about what you need
to do affair for general anesthesia
general anesthesia means where we give
you agents where you are completely
asleep and not really in control of your
reflexes in the sense of drooling or the
ability to have gastric juice come back
into your mouth or to close the gulf
glottis to coffee fective lee or things
like that that's the reason we ask you
not to eat before surgery if you have a
stomach full of food your brain is going
to send messages to your stomach and
you're also going to secrete stomach
juice which is high in acid now you've
got a mixture of particulate food and
acid material should that reflux back
into your mouth while you're lying on
your side
it could cause a very serious pneumonia
if it got down in your lungs we need to
avoid that at all cost and you can help
us in that direction by not eating for
solid foods for approximately eight
hours that also helps us with nausea
full stomach before you have general
anesthesia pretty much guarantees you'll
wake up queasy and we like to avoid that
intra operative awareness in other words
people remembering surgery that they're
undergoing this is a topic that's come
around for a long time
and people are reluctant to have surgery
people always ask me one of two things
they're either afraid they will not go
to sleep or they're afraid they will not
wake up now intraoperative awareness is
very unusual it usually comes with lower
levels of anesthesia but there are
reported cases of people who are
seemingly well and that's the type
that's because in the brain different
functions are anesthetized at different
levels most of what we're concerned
about folds into several different
categories quote hypnosis means you're
asleep but obviously if you're only
asleep at home in your bed if somebody
came in posted with something sharp you
jump up so in addition to hypnosis
there's amnesia analgesia muscle
relaxation and optimization of noxious
reflexes these are all the parts that
make up anesthesia there are different
levels of anesthesia concentrations will
perform different functions we can give
you a small amount of a decision have
you asleep
but you will not give you analgesia in
the sense that any stimulus of coke or
something will cause you to move and you
can be anesthetized to the point of not
moving but if you undergo surgery you
might have a reaction where the surgery
caused you to become hypertensive or a
rapid heart rate additionally in some
forms of surgery for example when the
doctors operating on the chest we need
muscle relaxation meaning you won't move
around even though you won't remember it
at all so what's the solution
adequate amounts of anesthesia in
patients who are deathly ill we
sometimes can't give them quite enough
anesthesia to keep them and music from
that so we add an a music agent like
versa
is intraoperative awareness rear yes
can it be treated yes and that's what we
do so what do we learn from this
anesthesia has many different facets to
it all of them have to be addressed in a
successful general anesthetic that's
what the anesthesiologist is there to do
review your history discuss with the
surgeon what operating conditions he
needs and vary the anesthesia during the
course of the case thanks this is Alan
Cohen I hope you enjoyed this video if
you have any further questions please
feel free to comment below or contact me
and I look forward to speaking to you
soon