Anesthesia is the most significant finding in
the modern surgery; in fact, this remarkable element has changed the medicine
in general since anesthesia was introduced for a first time in medicine by
William T. G. Morton, a Massachusetts dentist, in 1846. Avoiding pain and side
effects during the surgery, it is a benefit for both patients and doctors.
However, this painless technique is a double-edged sword.
It is true that anesthesia avoids pain in a
surgery, but its effects can make you avoid pain forever. In other words,
anesthesia can cause death. Soon after it was introduced, doctors looked how
many patients died during surgeries. Deaths increasing rate during the first years
of anesthesia was mainly related to mismanagement of the substance. As a
consequence, several researchers started developing new types of this miraculous
but lethal discovery, ending in the development of new anesthetic substances and
the creation of local and regional anesthesia.
After about 170 years of anesthesia, people are
still dying in the Ors of now-identified reasons. For example, Malignant
Hyperthermia, a disorder that affects patients’ muscles, heart rate and body
temperature, causing him/her death. A characteristic of this disorder is that
it doesn’t present any symptom before the surgery. Before the antidote was
discovered in the 1970s, 80% of the people who had this syndrome died.
Nowadays, only 5 % of the people died of this during an intervention, because
there are tests to identify if you had this disorder.
Anesthesia may be considered dangerous
nevertheless it is primal for surgeons. However, now there is plenty of
knowledge about how to use it and the cares doctors and patients have to take.
Is that knowledge enough to avoid deaths? Should people fear to be anesthetized?
You may think about your own experience in a surgery.
