Your Anaesthetic

In order to provide safe anaesthesia your Anaesthetist will need to review you prior to conducting their anaesthetic.  When and where this is conducted depends on your surgery and your health status.

You may need to be seen at the Derwent Anaesthesia rooms well in advance of your surgery.

The type of anaesthetic you receive will be discussed with you by your Anaesthetist.

These may include

• General Anaesthetic
• Local Anaesthetic with or without sedation
• Sedation
• Anaesthesia for Pain management

General Anaesthesia

During general anaesthesia you are unconscious. This means you are unaware of the procedure and all sensation. On awakening you should have no memory of the procedure.

There are a variety of ways to deliver a general anaesthetic in terms of the drugs used.  You may be kept asleep with gases or vapours through the breathing circuit you are connected to whilst unconscious or through drugs infused through computerised syringe drivers connected to your drip into your veins. A breathing tube may be inserted into your airway when you are asleep.

Current practice in Australia has a low rate of waking during general anaesthesia (awareness under anaesthesia).  This is partly due to rigorous Anaesthetic training as well as sophisticated monitoring of anaesthetic agents and brain wave monitoring looking at levels of consciousness.

During anaesthesia, you are carefully monitored, controlled and treated by your anaesthetist for the entire procedure.

On completion of the procedure your Anaesthetist will reverse the anaesthetic to allow you to wake up in the recovery room where you will be cared for by specially trained nurses.

Your anaesthetist will also be in charge of your pain relief after the operation.

Local Anaesthesia

The anaesthetic drug (local anaesthetic) is usually injected into the tissue to numb the specific location of your body requiring minor surgery. This is commonly used in minor surgery such as removal of lesions on the skin or in carpal tunnel surgery.

Regional Anaesthesia

This is an anaesthetic technique where an injection of local anaesthetic agent is injected around a group of nerves to numb a specific body part undergoing surgery.

This may include injections into

• The spinal space (spinal anaesthetic) that can allow specific procedures to be performed from the abdomen down.
• The epidural space (epidural)
• Nerves around the neck/clavicle/axilla(armpit) – to numb the shoulder and arm.
• Nerves around the front of the hip/ the buttock/ knee and foot – to numb the hip, knee, leg and foot.

Sedation

Sedation is commonly used to reduce a patient’s anxiety and relieve pain for many types of surgical procedures.  Described as “twilight anaesthesia” depending on the type of sedation – light or deep, most patients have little memory, if any, of the procedure. Analgesia or pain medications may also be incorporated in your sedation anaesthetic. It is commonly used in procedures such as cataract eye surgery and endoscopy (gastroscopies and colonoscopies).