Dr Md Anawar Hossain
What is anesthesiology?
It is a special branch of medicine that trains the doctors to give medical care before, during and after operation or surgery of the patients. The American Society of Anesthesiologists defined it as “the practice of medicine dedicated to the relief of pain and total care of surgical patients before, during, and after surgery”.
What are analgesics?
Analgesics are a class of drugs used to relieve different types of pain. They are called painkiller. Every analgesic drug functions under its own pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Analgesic relieves pain selectively without blocking the conduction of nerve impulses or affecting consciousness.
What is anesthetic?
Anesthetic is a medication used to cause a local or general loss of sensation leading to loss of pain. Anesthetic drugs or anesthetics make this effect by acting on the brain or peripheral nervous system to suppress responses to sensory stimulation.
Anesthesia
It causes the loss of pain during surgery. There are several types of anesthesia, such as general anesthesia, local anesthesia and regional anesthesia.
General anesthesia
It causes the loss of consciousness and relief of pain during surgery. It occurs throughout the body by administering anesthetics either by inhalation or by direct injection into the body.
Local anesthesia
It involves loss of sensation in one area of the body by the blockage of conduction in nerves.
Responsibilities of anesthesiologists
The anesthesiologists are the specialist doctors who provide continuous medical care before, during, and after operation to allow the surgeons to successfully complete the operation. They make the patient capable to live a normal anatomical, physiological, pharmacological, and psychological life during perioperative period (Verma et al., 2015). The anesthesiologists play a significant role when some critical situations can pose deadly threats to the patient’s life in operation time. They have specialised qualification and integrated skills to care for dying patients suffering from terminal diseases like cancer. They have knowledge of analgesic and sedative pharmacology to relieve patients’ pain, awareness of perceptual alterations, drug titration and stress management of patients under critical circumstances.
Anesthesiologists provide medical care to patients in following circumstances:
- Preoperative assessment and evaluation,
- Consultation with the surgical team and patients,
- Making a plan for the anesthesia for each specific patient,
- Airway management,
- Intraoperative life support,
- Pain control,
- Intraoperative stabilization of all the vitals,
- Postoperative pain management.
Except the medical care to patients in operation theatre,
Anesthesiologists also do further duties as below:
- General emergencies,
- Trauma,
- Intensive care units,
- Acute and chronic pain management.
An operation theatre with surgeons, anesthesiologist and others. Image by Sasin Tipchai from pixabay.
References
Verma R, Mohan B, Attri JP, Chatrath V, Bala A, Singh M. Anesthesiologist: The silent force behind the scene. Anesth Essays Res. 2015 Sep-Dec;9(3):293-7. doi: 10.4103/0259-1162.159775. PMID: 26712962; PMCID: PMC4683484.
Neural Mechanisms of General Anesthesia
General anesthesia, which is administered to surgical patients during operation, shares the similar numerous neurophysiologic traits with the process of natural sleep. The neural mechanisms underlying sleep–wake and general anesthesia can help to understand their interactions and how anesthetics cause reversible loss of consciousness. Pharmacotherapies, especially those which involve the neural substrates associated with sleep–wake and general anesthesia regulations, can play a significant role for clinical practice in general anesthesia and sleep medicine.
Nowadays, different advanced medical techniques have been developed that can study specific brain regions and neural circuits regulating sleep–wake brain states and general anesthesia. These study results have advanced our understanding and demonstrate that sleep–wake brain states and general anesthesia show similar neurophysiologic traits.
Reference
Wei-Wei Bao, Shan Jiang, Wei-Min Qu, Wen-Xian Li, Chang-Hong Miao and Zhi-Li Huang, Understanding the Neural Mechanisms of General Anesthesia from Interaction with Sleep–Wake State: A Decade of Discovery. Pharmacological Reviews May 2023, 75 (3) 532-553.