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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 was thought to enhance the inhibitory transmission or to reduce the excitatory transmission of neuro signaling. [12] Most volatile anaesthetics have been found to be a GABA A agonist, although the site of action on the receptor remains unknown. [13] Ketamine is a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist. [14]
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.
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 ...
Anesthesiology, anaesthesiology or anaesthesia is the medical specialty concerned with the total perioperative care of patients before, during and after surgery. [1] It encompasses anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine, and pain medicine. [2]
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.
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.
Since general anesthesia first became widely used in late 1846, assessment of anesthetic depth was a problem. To determine the depth of anesthesia, the anesthetist relies on a series of physical signs of the patient .