Anesthesia Injury

Anesthesiology is a complicated and risky practice. An anesthesiologist must administer deadly drugs in the proper doses to keep you unconscious enough for the doctor to work but not so unconscious that your heart and lungs stop.

Walking this line sometimes produces errors, and legal liability makes anesthesiologists reluctant to self-report those errors. But independent studies put the error rate at more than 1 in 20. This means a hospital that handles 20 surgeries per day will have about 365 anesthesia errors every year.

Read on to learn about anesthesia injury types and how an injury lawyer can help you recover compensation for an anesthesia injury.

How Do Doctors Use Anesthesia?

Anesthesia blocks nerve signals from traveling between the body and the brain. This involves complicated chemistry.

Some anesthetics block ion transmission. These anesthetics prevent nerves from generating or transmitting signals. Other anesthetics block neurotransmitter reception. These anesthetics stop the brain from receiving nerve signals.

In either case, the anesthetic isolates the body from the brain. This isolation serves several purposes, including:

Stopping Pain

Stopping pain is essential to performing surgery or other invasive procedures. Patients who experience pain move around. Their reactions, particularly the verbal reactions, can unnerve doctors. By stopping pain, anesthesia keeps the patient comfortable during a procedure and allows doctors to do their work.

Paralyzing the Patient’s Reflexes

Anesthesia paralyzes the reflexes in the patient’s muscles and organs. Even an unconscious patient’s muscles and organs can react during surgery without anesthesia. If the patient’s reflexes get paralyzed, the doctor can operate without worrying about the organs and muscles moving involuntarily.

Render the Patient Unconscious

Doctors find it easier to operate on an unconscious patient, particularly when the procedure:

• Takes a long time
• Feels uncomfortable
• Requires precision
• Appears gory

Even if the patient does not need a general anesthetic for the scope of the surgery, a general anesthetic often helps the doctor work more efficiently.

What Are the Types of Anesthesia?

To understand the types of anesthesia, you need to know a little about the nervous system. The brain connects to the body through the spinal cord. All of the nerve signals passing between your body below your neck and your brain run along the spinal cord.

At each vertebra, nerve roots branch off the spinal cord. These nerve roots carry the nerves to a region of your body. For example, the nerve root for your shoulder and arms branches off of your spinal cord in your neck.

The nerve roots further branch into peripheral nerves. The peripheral nerves provide nerve endings in your muscles and organs to control individual movements and perceive individual sensations.

Doctors divide anesthetics into three categories based on how they get administered and the effects they cause. These categories include:

Local Anesthetics

Local anesthetics stop the peripheral nerves from transmitting. As a result, local anesthetics usually only affect the area where the doctor administers the anesthetic.

A dentist might inject Novocaine into your gum near a tooth extraction site. This local anesthetic prevents the nerves in your gum and tooth from transmitting pain signals to your brain.

Regional Anesthetics

Regional anesthetics stop the nerve roots from transmitting. Under a regional anesthetic, you will lose sensation and control over the entire area served by the nerve root.

When a woman receives an epidural during labor and delivery, the anesthesiologist administers a regional anesthetic through a catheter inserted into the spinal canal. This anesthetic stops the nerves in the nerve root from sending or receiving signals from the body region covered by it.

General Anesthetics

Doctors use general anesthesia for major surgery. General anesthetics usually involve multiple drugs that paralyze you, block the pain receptors in your brain, and render you unconscious.

While under a general anesthetic, your airway and heartbeat must be monitored by an anesthesiologist because powerful anesthetics can paralyze your lungs and heart.