Anesthesia is a method of controlling during a surgical procedure using medicine that is called anesthetics. It helps to relax a patient and block pain during a process by causing sleepiness, forgetting or unconsciousness. The use of anesthesia procedure can also help in controlling breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and flow.
There could be a need to use other medicine to complement anesthesia such as those that help the patient to relax or reverse anesthesia effects. Although anesthesia does not have much risk, it may cause adverse effects if it goes wrong.
- Dizziness, blurred vision and vomiting
- Muscle twitching
- A headache
- Longtime weakness, numbness or tingling.
- The allergic reaction by some patients causing itching, breathing difficulties and development of hives
- Cyanosis that causes the skin to turn bluish which is a symptom of inadequate oxygenation in the blood or poor circulation.
In rare cases, patients experience Buy Nursing Capstone Project online depressed Central Nervous System syndrome in which CNS slows down excessively to reduce heart and breathing rate. The effect can cause a cardiac arrest is the blood does not pump to the heart. An overdose of local anesthetic that helps to numb pain during a minor surgery without causing unconsciousness can cause life-threatening seizures.
Improving Anesthesia Safety
- Elimination of human errors
Human errors or failure by the equipment during anesthesia are called critical incidents. When they occur, the outcome will be undesirable. It is essential to perform a critical incident analysis to determine if it is likely to have been a Write My nursing Capstone Project cause of unwanted results an solve the reason. It also helps to prevent the occurrence if critical incidents.
Human error is the cause of many mishaps in anesthesia and causes up to 70 percent of the critical incidents. Human errors occur during:
- Drug administration
- Airway management
- Use of anesthesia machine
- Operation of a monitoring device Control of fluid and intravenous equipment
Strategies to select and prevent critical incidents help to eliminate human errors or equipment malfunction. These strategies include selecting skilled personnel, additional training, development of preoperative assessments and monitoring modalities. Surgical teams should also improvise organizational protocols that anesthetists and their assistants should follow for safety and desired outcome.
- Management of difficult airway
The traditional outcome of anesthesia is that is stopped a patient from breathing normally for them to get into a medically induced coma. Anesthetists will use intubation to oxygenate the patients throughout the procedure. The challenge for this approach is that it was ineffective for surgery on patients with narrow airways because tube insertion into the trachea is impossible. A group of anesthetists at Princess Alexandra hospital found a solution to oxygenate patients who in the past were unsuitable for surgery due to the narrowed airway.
They applied a way of keeping patients breathing impulsively during anesthesia. The method that these anesthetists began involves a high flow supply of oxygen through the nose like the practice in respiratory units and intensive care. The technique helps to manage anesthesia for patients with extreme narrowing of the airway.
- Implementing an anesthesia safety checklist
A hospital can help to improve and maintain anesthesia safety by developing specific safety protocols with a safety checklist before inducing anesthetics. The list should help the anesthetist to answer these questions before the procedure.
- Experience and training of the assistant availed to help with induction
- If the patients have not taken food or drink during a specified time before surgery
- The functionality of an intravenous access
- If the surgery table can tilt quickly to head down position if sudden vomiting or hypotension occurs
- The functionality of all other equipment
Anesthetists should create time to prepare and study an operative procedure list if they are a part of a surgical team that will perform some operations in succession. It helps in determining the age, infection, conditions such as diabetes and length of surgical procedure in advance to prepare adequately.
