How long side effects of anesthesia

You may feel disoriented and have problems remembering or focusing. This can worsen if you are staying in the hospital for a few days after the procedure, especially in intensive care, because you are in an unfamiliar place. Having a loved one with you helps, along with doing some other simple things: wearing your glasses or hearing aids as soon as you can after the procedure and making sure you have family photos, familiar objects, and a clock and calendar in your room.

Muscle aches — The medications used to relax your muscles so a breathing tube can be inserted can cause soreness. Itching — This is a common side effect of narcotics, one type of pain medication sometimes used with general anesthesia. Chills and shivering hypothermia — This occurs in up to half of patients as they regain consciousness after surgery, and it might be related to body temperature.

Rarely, general anesthesia can cause more serious complications, including: Postoperative delirium or cognitive dysfunction — In some cases, confusion and memory loss can last longer than a few hours or days.

A condition called postoperative cognitive dysfunction can result in long-term memory and learning problems in certain patients. People who have had a stroke in the past are also more at risk. Malignant hyperthermia — Some people inherit this serious, potentially deadly reaction to anesthesia that can occur during surgery, causing a quick fever and muscle contractions.

If you or a family member has ever had heat stroke or suffered from malignant hyperthermia during a previous surgery, be sure to tell the physician anesthesiologist. Headache — This can occur a few days after the procedure if some spinal fluid leaks out when regional anesthetic is delivered through the spine, as in an epidural or spinal block for childbirth.

General anesthesia prevents your body from moving while you're unconscious. Still, it's possible for your body to move a little. Since even small movements can be dangerous for some surgeries, in those cases, you'll also get a muscle relaxer.

Sometimes people have an allergic reaction to anesthetic drugs. Symptoms are similar to any other allergic reaction. Your anesthesiologist directs the anesthesia team of anesthesiology residents and nurses. A member of the anesthesia team will stay by your side to monitor your vital signs and breathing throughout the operation.

The anesthesiologist will frequently check on you during your care. Charlottesville , VA United States. Outpatient Surgery Center W. Main St. Pediatric Surgery 5th Floor W. In This Section. Anesthesia: FAQs. Regional anesthesia desensitizes a large section of someone's body by injecting drugs into the spine that block nerve signals to the brain. Often a patient getting regional anesthesia also takes a relatively small dose of a powerful sedative drug, such as propofol—not enough to put them under but enough to alter brain activity in a way that makes the person less aware and responsive.

General anesthesia relies on a cocktail of drugs that renders patients completely unconscious, prevents them from moving and blocks any memories of the surgery. Although anesthetic drugs have been around since , many questions remain as to how exactly they work. To date, the strongest evidence suggests that the drugs are effective in part because they bind to and incapacitate several different proteins on the surface of neurons that are essential for regulating sleep, attention, learning and memory.

In addition, it seems that interrupting the usual activity of neurons may disrupt communication between far-flung regions of the brain, which somehow triggers unconsciousness. When postoperative delirium was first recognized, researchers wondered whether certain anesthetic drugs—but not others—deserved the blame. Yet studies comparing specific drugs and rates of delirium in patients after surgery have always been scant and inconclusive. Eckenhoff, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

One reason scientists struggled to say whether sedative drugs were at fault was the difficulty of separating them from other major hospital stresses, such as surgery itself. Indeed, many of the things that make being hospitalized so unpleasant—poor sleep, restricted movement and a regimen of medicines—can also cause confusion, forgetfulness and even delusions. In spite of these difficulties, researchers hit on two other factors that increased the chances a patient would become dramatically confused after an operation: being older than about 70 and having preexisting mental deficits, such as regularly forgetting appointments or severe dementia.

Delirium is also more common after major surgeries—which can last at least a few hours and require patients to stay one night or longer in the hospital. Among patients above age 60 about 50 percent become seriously disoriented after heart bypass or valve replacement surgery, according to one study, yet the same is true for only 15 percent or so of patients in the same age range who have elective hip joint surgery—a shorter and less risky procedure.

Research over the past several years has revived anesthesia as a potential culprit in delirium: instead of focusing on the type of anesthetic drug, scientists are now concerned about the amount of overall anesthesia. Researchers suspect that the more anesthesia someone receives—and, consequently, the deeper someone slips into unconsciousness—the greater the risk of delirium. In one study, for example, Frederick E. Sieber of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and his colleagues gave 57 elderly hip surgery patients enough propofol to achieve regional anesthesia and another 57 patients enough propofol to induce general anesthesia.

Eleven of the lightly anesthetized patients became delirious after the operation, compared with 23 of the patients under general anesthesia. An operation is a major life event. Make sure you get adequate rest and have enough support at work and home before your surgery.

A bit of anxiety is normal before surgery and can also be exhausting. You can reduce your anxiety by asking for clear explanations of what to expect, and by maintaining a warm, comfortable and calm waiting environment. He or she will develop an individualised anaesthetic plan based on short-acting anaesthetics and a combination of pain-killings drugs.

Your anaesthetist will also advise you how to best control your pain after surgery and when you return home. This will often involve using simple pain medicines, such as paracetamol and anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as opioids, which you will need to treat strong pain. Using simple pain medicines will help to reduce the doses of opioids that you need, and help you to avoid the nausea, constipation and grogginess that goes with them. This involves maximising cues to the body that it is time to sleep in the evening.

These could include avoiding stimulants like caffeine and alcohol, going to bed at a similar time each night, being in a dimly lit room and engaging in calming or restful activities before sleep, like reading.