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Home » Consumer Information » Medical Malpractice

Anesthesia

Anesthesia| Attorneys for Orlando, Tampa, Fort Myers, Jacksonville and Miami

There is some level of risk involved with every type of anesthesia, although severe side effects caused by anesthesia are rare. An individual’s risks are based on health, kind of anesthesia used, and your response to the drug. Age can be a risk factor; overall, older people are more susceptible. Medical conditions of the heart, circulatory system, and central nervous system combined with anesthesia can create problems.

Complications caused by local anesthesia

When properly administered, local anesthesia is safe and exhibits few major side effects. In fact, most people never experience any at all with average doses. On the other hand, large doses can cause mayhem when the body absorbs it through the bloodstream. This reaction, known as systemic toxicity, may impact breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, and other system functions. Since there is always a possibility for these complications to occur, emergency care equipment should be on location wherever anesthetics are used.

Complications caused by regional anesthesia

During regional anesthesia, the injection is administered near a nerve or bunch of nerves or the spinal cord. On rare occasions, a nerve may be damaged, causing unrelenting loss of feeling, weakness, or soreness.

As with local anesthesia, regional anesthesia also brings with it the potential for system toxicity. Other symptoms may include heart or pulmonary problems and infection, inflammation, or bruising at the place of injection.

Spinal anesthesia medication is injected into the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the spinal cord. A frequent side effect of spinal anesthesia is a headache triggered when this fluid leaks. With modern medicine, this leaking happens in only one or two percent of all spinal anesthesia patients, and it is seen more often in young people. Spinal headaches can be promptly addressed with the use of a blood patch to forestall future complications. A blood patch is created by injecting a tiny quantity of the patient’s own blood into the region of the leak so as to secure the hole, increase pressure inside the spinal cavity, and alleviate the stress on membranes encasing the canal.

Complications caused by general anesthesia

Healthy people normally do not exhibit serious side effects from general anesthesia. Since it encompasses the entire body, general anesthesia is more likely to cause side effects than local or regional anesthesia. Luckily, most side effects of anesthesia are easily curable.

General anesthesia stifles natural throat reflexes that prevent aspiration such as swallowing, coughing, or gagging. Aspiration occurs when a piece of food or liquid becomes lodged in the trachea or lungs (respiratory tract). To avoid aspiration, an endotracheal tube may be inserted during general anesthesia. When an endotracheal tube is positioned in the throat, the lungs are blocked off from the digestive system so that stomach contents cannot seep into the lungs. Aspiration during surgery using anesthesia is very rare; patients are normally told not to consume any food or beverages for a specific time period prior to surgery because an empty stomach will minimize the risk. Anesthesiologists utilize a variety of precautionary measures to reduce the chance of aspiration in every patient.

Insertion or removal of breathing aids could create respiratory troubles like coughing, gagging, or muscle spasms in the larynx (laryngospasm) and bronchial tubes (bronchospasm). It may also trigger an increase in blood pressure (hypertension) and heart rate (tachycardia). Additional complications may include damage to the mouth (teeth and lips), inflammation of the voice box, sore throat, and hoarseness caused by irritating or injuring the larynx. Even more serious side effects could result from general anesthesia such as fluctuations in blood pressure or heart rate, stroke, or heart attack. Severe illness or injury or death caused by anesthesia is extremely rare and typically has something to do with errors in the surgical procedure. Approximately one in 250,000 people die during general anesthesia, but the risk is significantly increased in patients with serious medical issues.

Some patients undergoing general anesthesia worry that they will not be given a high enough dosage and could become semiconscious during surgery. However, awareness during surgery is a very odd occurrence because anesthesiologists are dedicated to the prevention of catastrophes of the sort.

Reactions to anesthetics

On rare occasions, some anesthesia medication may cause allergic or other irregularities in certain people. If you believe you may have similar difficulties, alert the surgeon and anesthesiologist quite some time prior to surgery. Tests will then be conducted to determine the exact diagnosis.

Some anesthetics may cause a potentially deadly situation known as malignant hyperthermia. The two anesthetics usually related to this condition are inhalation anesthetics and succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant.