Anesthesia

You'll be placed on a stretcher and brought into the operation room after everything is prepared. The anesthesiologist will likely administer some medication that not only relaxes you but also has an amnesic effect, so you may or may not remember this specific incident. You won't be able to remember much of the experience later, but you'll still be awake and able to work with the personnel.

Your heart rate and the amount of oxygen in your blood will be monitored by a number of electronic instruments once you are in the operating room. A plastic mask covering your mouth and nose will be used to administer oxygen to you. To make sure your blood is well oxygenated before the anesthesiologist puts you to sleep, do this.

You must be completely relaxed in addition to being unconscious and unable to feel anything for the surgeon to be able to do the operation. A narcotic-type drug that dulls the pain-sensing parts of your brain, an anesthetic that puts you to sleep and keeps you there, and a muscle relaxant that paralyzes your muscles are the three different types of medications the anesthesiologist utilizes to achieve this goal. These medications are administered through the IV that was put in when you first entered the holding room.

The technique of induction, which is the most challenging aspect of the anesthesia, involves inserting an endotracheal tube through your vocal chords and into your windpipe (or trachea) in order to sustain breathing. Anesthesiologists must be prepared to utilize a variety of procedures to establish and maintain the patient's airway because intubating a considerable number of morbidly obese persons is considered challenging. Particularly for the paralyzing drugs, the order and dosages of the several anesthetic medications are crucial in this process. You won't be able to breathe on your own once the paralyzing medicines have been administered, so the anesthesiologist will have to do it for you.

I've been questioned numerous times about the necessity of the patient's paralysis. Really, it's a really straightforward response. Your muscles continue to work reflexively in response to any stimuli even when you are entirely asleep. Gas must be inflated into the abdominal cavity prior to laparoscopic procedures. That just would not be possible without paralyzing the muscles. The muscles would react by tightening up against the inflation, leaving the surgeon with no room to operate inside the abdomen.

There has been a lot published and stated about what patients actually go through during procedures recently, including how they might remember hearing conversations and even feeling pain. Such events are certainly possible, but they are extremely uncommon. Most surgical patients don't remember anything that happens throughout their procedure. For those who can remember something, it usually comes in the form of hearing conversations going on around them. This is due to the fact that anesthetic medications usually impede the final sense—hearing—to function.

You may be wondering why they don't simply administer enough anesthetic to ensure that such events cannot happen. The majority of the time, the anesthesiologist accomplishes exactly that, but all of these drugs wear off over time, and not every patient's body absorbs these potent meds in the same way. The anesthesiologist must strike a balance between the patient's needs and the effects of the drugs while also avoiding overdose. The ideal scenario is for the medications to start working fully right away and to stop working totally right when the surgeon is finished with the procedure. However, not everyone reacts uniformly to every medicine administered. You may stay asleep for a lot longer than is necessary if more medication is administered than is necessary.

You will be transferred from the operating room to the recovery room once the procedure is complete. Its name has changed, which is interesting because it happens to many things in medicine. The post-anesthesia care unit, or PACU, is a better name for it. Your entry into the PACU marks the start of your postoperative recuperation, which is addressed in the following chapter.

How to Prepare for Surgery

Any change significant enough to affect your sense of self will call for a complete metamorphosis of your personality, not simply minor tweaks.

— Martha Beck, "Growing Wings," 0 Magazine, January 2004.

Once you are in the recovery room or PACU following the majority of surgical operations, it is reasonable to claim that "the hard part is over." That is not the case with the AGB, though. The actual surgery may have been completed, but the hard job of altering a lifetime's worth of habits, actions, and beliefs that contributed to your obesity has only just begun. But completing the procedure is actually a significant step in your weight-loss goal.

the day following surgery

In the PACU for the first hour or so following surgery, you will be closely watched as the anaesthetic drugs progressively take their toll. You might not even recall visiting the PACU. Many people have told me that they can clearly remember waking up in their hospital room as their first memory. Despite the fact that we chatted just a few minutes after their procedure, both they and I did. The majority of anesthetic drugs generate drug-induced amnesia, which is not always a bad thing.

Sometimes it is almost comical to hear a patient ask a question about the procedure, appear to hear and understand the response, then immediately ask the same question again. Patients will occasionally ask the same inquiry repeatedly, using the exact same phrases and vocalizations.

tones. They would re-ask the same question the next day, never remembering having any conversation. However, this time, only once.

The two most frequent complaints for people in the PACU who are awake and conscious are pain and nausea. Both of these can frequently be avoided by preemptively administering the proper drugs. If problems persist despite these precautions, more drugs are easily accessible.

In general, pain after laparoscopic surgery is not a serious issue. The little incisions normally don't cause a lot of pain. The location of the injection port can be an exception.

The port may occasionally create a strong pain in the area since it is sutured to the muscle layer, especially when you move, breathe deeply, or cough. However, as these are crucial tasks to complete following surgery, pain medication will be administered if the discomfort is severe enough to interfere with movement.

It should come as no surprise that after procedures done directly on or near the stomach, the patient frequently experiences nausea soon they are awake. The same goes for retching or vomiting following this kind of surgery. It is crucial to regulate your nausea because it's likely that it could cause some major harm. The best method to handle this situation is to administer the right antinausea drugs in advance. There are several different drugs that we have available for individuals who experience postoperative nausea. Fortunately, this kind of sickness typically goes away by the next day.