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General anaesthetics (or anesthetics) are often defined as compounds that induce a loss of consciousness in humans or loss of righting reflex in animals. Clinical definitions are also extended to include an induced coma that causes lack of awareness to painful stimuli, sufficient to facilitate surgical applications in clinical and veterinary practice.
General anaesthesia is usually induced in an operating theatre or in an anaesthetic room next to the theatre. More rarely, it may be induced in an endoscopy suite, intensive care unit , radiology or cardiology department, emergency department , ambulance, or even at the site of a disaster where extrication of the patient may be impractical.
Each anesthetic has its own potency, which is correlated to its solubility in oil. This relationship exists because the drugs bind directly to cavities in proteins of the central nervous system, although several theories of general anesthetic action have been described. Inhalational anesthetics are thought to exact their effects on different ...
Leaves of the coca plant (Erythroxylum novogranatense var. Novogranatense), from which cocaine, a naturally occurring local anesthetic, is derived [1] [2]. An anesthetic (American English) or anaesthetic (British English; see spelling differences) is a drug used to induce anesthesia — in other words, to result in a temporary loss of sensation or awareness.
This allows patients to undergo surgery and other procedures without the distress and pain they would otherwise experience. An alternative definition is a "reversible lack of awareness," including a total lack of awareness (e.g. a general anesthetic) or a lack of awareness of a part of the body such as a spinal anesthetic.
Two weeks later, Morton became the first to publicly demonstrate the use of diethyl ether as a general anesthetic at Massachusetts General Hospital, in what is known today as the Ether Dome. [104] On 16 October 1846, John Collins Warren removed a tumor from the neck of a local printer, Edward Gilbert Abbott. Upon completion of the procedure ...
To induce general anesthesia, propofol is the drug used almost exclusively, having largely replaced sodium thiopental. [13]It is often administered as part of an anesthesia maintenance technique called total intravenous anesthesia, using either manually programmed infusion pumps or computer-controlled infusion pumps in a process called target controlled infusion (TCI).
The Meyer-Overton correlation for anaesthetics. A nonspecific mechanism of general anaesthetic action was first proposed by Emil Harless and Ernst von Bibra in 1847. [9] They suggested that general anaesthetics may act by dissolving in the fatty fraction of brain cells and removing fatty constituents from them, thus changing activity of brain cells and inducing anaesthesia.