Types of Anesthesia

Anesthesia keeps you pain free during surgery. Your fear and anxiety can be alleviated by the medications you are given by your anesthesiologist. Anesthesia can cause you to lose feeling or sensation during the operation with or without loss of consciousness.

Local Anesthesia

  • You will remain awake, but the part of your body that will be operated upon is made numb to pain. This loss of pain sensation is produced by directly injecting the area to be treated with numbing medication.

Monitored Care Anesthesia (MAC)

  • You will be given pain medication and/or sedative, in conjunction with a local anesthetic, to keep you comfortable during the procedure.
  • Patients often recover quickly from this type of anesthesia.

Regional Anesthesia

  • You remain awake, but the entire area of your body affected by the surgery is made free of pain.
  • Regional anesthetics, such as spinal, epidural, or caudal are most commonly used in surgical procedures of the lower abdomen, pelvis and extremities.
  • NERVE BLOCKS: a type of regional anesthesia most commonly used to numb a single extremity such as one arm or one leg.
  • You may also receive sedatives to ease your anxiety. These sedatives do not cause unconsciousness, but may leave you with little or no memory of the procedure.

General Anesthesia

  • You are asleep and your whole body is made free of pain.
  • It is given by intravenous injection of medications and inhalation of anesthetic gases.
  • You may have a breathing tube inserted during the procedure to help you breathe. It is placed after you are asleep and removed before you awake.
  • You may be given either local, MAC, regional, general anesthesia or a combination of one or more types of anesthesia. Your surgeon and your anesthesiologist will discuss with you the type of anesthesia which will meet your needs during your surgery.

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At USAP, we pride ourselves on delivering the highest quality anesthesia patient care in the nation. Our industry-leading clinicians, clinical quality committees, local clinical governance boards and proprietary IT tools enable advanced data capture, analytics and continuous improvement in all aspects of our practice. Our innovative ideas and measurement capabilities raise the bar for the entire industry and shape the future of anesthesia as we know it.