How long does it take to recover after taking anesthesia?

Generally, people will be able to return to normal after a period of time after taking anesthesia. The dosage of anesthesia will vary for different surgeries, and the time required for recovery will also vary. Sometimes people can recover in half an hour and the effect of the drug will wear off, but some surgeries may take several hours, and the anesthesia time will be relatively long due to the large dosage. There are also local anesthesia, general anesthesia, etc.

1. The difference between "local anesthesia" and "general anesthesia"

Surgical anesthesia is divided into "local anesthesia" and "general anesthesia". People usually think that "local anesthesia" causes less damage to the human body. However, at the "2005 Nanjing Sino-US Anesthesiology Forum" recently, more than 100 top anesthesiology experts from China and the United States agreed that general anesthesia is the development trend. General anesthesia does not damage the patient's brain, and the patient will not have psychological problems such as fear and depression after the operation. "General anesthesia" is safer than "local anesthesia".

General anesthesia is the process of suppressing the central nervous system throughout the body, so that the patient does not feel pain during surgery and their memory is temporarily lost. Local anesthesia, on the other hand, only inhibits nerve conduction in a certain area of ​​the body to produce an anesthetic effect [1]. Mothers may have such a terrible experience during a cesarean section under local anesthesia. Although they do not feel pain, they can hear the sound of the blade cutting through the flesh and see the doctor taking the baby out of the belly. Therefore, they are prone to psychological problems such as fear and depression after giving birth. In fact, even minor surgeries such as cholelithectomy require general anesthesia. If local anesthesia is used, doctors will worry that the patient may experience a "gall-heart reflex". If rescue is not timely, minor surgery may also result in the patient's death.

2 Methods of local anesthesia

Commonly used local anesthesia methods include topical anesthesia, local infiltration anesthesia, regional block anesthesia and plexus block anesthesia. ① Surface anesthesia: Spray, drip or apply local anesthetics with strong penetrating power on the surface of the mucosa to act on the nerve endings under the mucosa to produce an anesthetic effect. Commonly used local anesthetics are lidocaine and caine. ② Local infiltration anesthesia: The local anesthetic procaine or lidocaine is injected into the surgical area in layers from shallow to deep to block the nerve endings in the tissue. In clinical practice, a small amount of epinephrine is often added to the local anesthetic solution to slow down the absorption rate, constrict blood vessels, and reduce bleeding. ③ Regional block anesthesia: local anesthetics such as procaine or lidocaine are injected around and at the base of the surgical area to produce an anesthetic effect on the tissues within the encirclement. ④ Plexus block anesthesia: local anesthetics are injected around nerve trunks, plexuses, and ganglia to block the conduction of nerve impulses and produce anesthetic effects in the areas they control. Its characteristic is that a smaller amount of local anesthetics is used to produce anesthetic effects in a wider area, but it requires the anesthesiologist to be familiar with the anatomy and surface landmarks of the nerves. Therefore, some plexus anesthesia is performed by professional anesthesiologists.