Hip and knee operations should be done under local anesthetic to help cut carbon emissions

The Telegraph via Yahoo ^ | 6/17/2020 | Emma Gatten

[qam1]

Using local instead of general anaesthetic for hip, knee and other operations could help cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

Drugs used for general anaesthetics contain greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide, which can stay in the atmosphere for up to 114 years and contribute to global warming.

Switching the one million annual hip and knee replacement operations in the United States to local anaesthetic would save the equivalent of 7.3 million miles driven in a car, according to the study, which was based on a one-year experiment at a hospital in New York and published in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.

Surgeons at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York carried out 96 per cent of their hip and knee replacements using local anaesthesia in 2019, and estimated they saved the equivalent of 60,500 car miles.

That compared to an average of 75 per cent normally done under general anesthesia.

Although the greenhouse gases used in anaesthesia last just a fraction of the time in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide, some are thousands of times more potent, and scientists say reducing the impact on the environment in the near future is crucial.

Anaesthetic gases account for between 50-60 per cent of the carbon footprint of an operating theatre in the US as less than 5 per cent of the gases are inhaled by the patient, leaving the rest to enter the atmosphere.

The study also highlighted that local anaesthetic is often preferable in terms of giving patients a shorter hospital stay, more effective pain relief and fewer side effects, although its authors acknowledged it is not always suitable.

[oldtech]

Thinking that eliminating anesthetic for Gender Transition Surgeries might reduce the number requested. Can’t see any reasonable reason for them anyway.