The Department of Anaesthesiology aids patients with pre-operative care, to reduce pain during surgeries, for both minimally invasive and complex open surgeries. The anaesthesiology department works in tandem with other departments and offers general anaesthesia, local anaesthesia, pain medicine, intensive care medicine and critical emergency medicine.
The different types of Anaesthesia are:
- General Anaesthesia: Where the patient is kept asleep and pain-free throughout the procedure using continuous administration of anaesthetics. At the end of the surgery, the effect of anaesthetics is reversed and he/she is woken up
- Regional Anaesthesia: Where the patient is awake but the part to be operated upon is made temporarily numb using an injection of local anaesthetics. If the injection is made into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, it is called spinal anaesthesia. If local anaesthetics are injected around the sheath covering the spinal cord, it is called epidural anaesthesia. If the injection is made around individual nerve groups, it is called plexus block
- Monitored Anaesthesia Care: Some surgeries can be done using local anaesthesia where the injection is made immediately around the part to be operated upon. This is suitable for relatively minor surgeries. However, if there is a worry that the patient can get anxious or that the surgery might be more extensive than anticipated, anaesthetists are requested to be ‘stand-by’ to administer sedation, pain relief or anaesthesia as required.
The anaesthesiologist allows you to undergo the surgery safely and comfortably, they aid in pain management and good pain management leads to better surgical outcomes and helps in recovery by reducing postoperative complications.
