Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The drug interactions between sedative-hypnotic agents and adjuvant agents suggest that dosing regimens cannot be fixed. [19] Instead, dosing should be based on adjusted body weight or estimated lean body weight, especially for obese patients. It is recommended that drug doses be titrated in brief intervals (around 20 to 60 seconds). [22]
Methohexital or methohexitone (marketed under the brand names Brevital and Brietal) is a drug which is a barbiturate derivative. It is classified as short-acting, and has a rapid onset of action. [2] It is similar in its effects to sodium thiopental, a drug with which it competed in the market for anesthetics.
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.
The patient presses a button to activate a syringe device and receive a preset dose or "bolus" of the drug, usually a strong opioid such as morphine, fentanyl, or oxycodone (e.g., one milligram of morphine). The PCA device then "locks out" for a preset period to allow the drug to take effect, and also prevent the patient from overdosing.
Balanced anesthesia can make patients calm by using drugs such as: medetomidine, diazepam or midazolam, and acepromazine. [18] Keeping patients calm prior to surgery can avoid the unpredictable consequences of stress, such as tachypnea, hypertension and tachycardia which may be harmful to the anesthetized patients. [18]
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.
Some patients request to be switched to a different narcotic due to stigma associated with a particular drug (e.g. a patient refusing methadone due to its association with opioid addiction treatment). [4] Equianalgesic charts are also used when calculating an equivalent dosage of the same drug, but with a different route of administration.
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.