Make a custom website for Anesthetists

Overview. General anesthesia brings on a sleep-like state with the use of a combination of medicines. The medicines, known as anesthetics, are given before and during surgery or other medical procedures. General anesthesia usually uses a combination of intravenous medicines and inhaled gasses.

Now, advances in anesthesia have allowed for lifesaving surgeries that would be impossible otherwise. Surgeries to treat cancer, organ transplants, and open-heart surgery are only a few types of the important techniques anesthesia has made possible.

Anesthesia works by blocking signals in the nervous system. The nervous system is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves. Messages from the body travel through the nerves and spinal cord to the brain. Anesthesia blocks pain messages from getting to the brain.

Its not clear exactly how it works, but its known that all anaesthetics stop the nerves from passing signals to the brain. This means you do not feel anything.

One of the truly great moments in the long history of medicine occurred on a tense fall morning in the surgical amphitheater of Bostons Massachusetts General Hospital. It was there, on Oct. 16, 1846, that a dentist named William T. G. Morton administered an effective anesthetic to a surgical patient.

What will it feel like to have general anesthesia? General anesthesia puts you into a state deeper than sleep. You should feel yourself drift off quickly, within a couple of minutes.

Anesthesia uses drugs called anesthetics to keep you from feeling pain during medical procedures. Local and regional anesthesia numbs a specific area of your body. General anesthesia makes you temporarily unconscious (fall asleep) so you can have more invasive surgeries.

One name stands out amongst all others when the founder of modern anesthesia is discussed, William T.G. Morton (1819-1868). A young Boston Dentist, Dr. Morton had been in the search for a better agent than what had been used by many dentists: nitrous oxide. With Dr.