You ask how anesthetic can suppress a person's tactile and painful sensibility in your query. To respond to you, I must first define anesthesia. The first thing I'd like to say is that it's critical because without it, a major portion of today's surgeries would be impossible to complete. If a cardiac procedure is required, for example, only anesthetic treatments can be used. Surgery has progressed significantly as a result of the development of a highly precise and individualized anesthetic method for each patient. An anesthesiologist is a doctor who has studied medicine and then specialized in it. She is the person who looks after you when you are being operated on.
There are three forms of anesthesia: general, regional, and local. Regional anesthesia refers to when we anesthetize just a significant section of the body (an arm, a leg, both legs, etc.). Local anesthesia refers to when we anesthetize only a small area of the body (an arm, a leg, both legs, etc). (for example the pad of the finger if we have done a wound and you have to stitch it up). We are placed to sleep fully under general anesthesia. We can do this by combining four components that make general anesthesia possible. Each of these medications serves a purpose: some are used to induce amnesia, or the inability to recall events; others are hypnotic, putting the patient into a deep slumber; and yet others are sedatives.
These medications perform as they should because they block or favor a receptor that is relevant to the function they are trying to affect. When the human body gets a stimulus, it is conveyed to the brain's neurons, which are responsible for interpreting what is going on. For example, if I am burned, my brain receives a signal indicating that I am in pain as a result of the burn (and this allows me to remove my hand from the fire). Anesthetics work by blocking the pathways that carry the impulses to the brain. When I give a patient an analgesic to relieve pain, the analgesic blocks the messengers (called neurotransmitters) that alert the brain to the presence of pain.
At the microscopic level, cell membranes have a plethora of receptors, each with its own purpose. Anesthetic medicines work by blocking the specific receptors of the function they're targeting. This allows us to block only the desired sensitivity rather than the entire body. Aside from pain sensitivity, the body also has tactile, thermal, and vibratory sensitivity, as well as proprioception, which allows us to know where we are at all times. For anesthesia, I can block all or portion of the sensory pathways, such as the pain route. The epidural anesthesia used in delivery, which is a localized anesthesia, is a good example of this. Only pain sensitivity is suppressed in this scenario, but not motor sensibility.
Anesthesia doctors' duties begins before the operation since they must assess the patient prior to the procedure. They examine the patient's heart, lungs, and other organs and devise a unique treatment plan for them. They treat you like an ITV to ensure that you have the fewest issues possible. They also design the anesthesia you'll need based on how you're feeling and what surgery you're having, and they stay by your side until you're transferred to the inpatient ward from the post-anesthetic recovery unit (PACU) or critical care. We will also be the professionals in charge of stabilizing you and providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation medicines if you have a heart arrest or a significant response during your stay.
Carolina Soledad Romero is a doctor who specializes in anesthesia, resuscitation, and pain management at Valencia's General University Hospital Consortium. She is also a professor at Valencia's European University and a member of the Spanish Society (SEDAR) and the ESAIC's Clinical Guidelines Committee (European Society of Anesthesia and Intensive Care).
