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Research provides insight into a critical issue facing surgical patients: post-operative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). POCD is a neurological complication that some patients experience after undergoing surgical procedures that require anesthesia. Anesthesia is not without risks. Sevoflurane, a widely-used anesthetic, has been identified as a significant factor contributing to postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). While generally considered safe and effective, sevoflurane has been linked to certain neurocognitive deficits, including POCD. Resveratrol (RES) is a bioactive compound found in certain foods like grapes. RES is a known agonist for Silent Information Regulator 1 (SIRT1), a protein that has various neuroprotective roles. By binding...

Patients receiving neuromuscular blocking medications as part of their anesthetic regimen should be carefully monitored to ensure best care, according to guidelines from the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care. Medications that provide neuromuscular blockade are frequently used in anesthesia, both to ease placement of a breathing tube at the beginning of the anesthetic (intubation) and to provide optimal conditions for the surgery itself. Both ASA and ESAIC guidelines for the management of neuromuscular blockade recommend patients be monitored quantitatively as part of the process, meaning that the degree of muscle relaxation is...

A study on monkeys found that stimulating a certain part of the forebrain wakes monkeys from anesthesia. Research suggests a tiny part of the brain plays a key role in enabling consciousness. The findings might someday be used to bring people out of comas, treat consciousness disorders or ensure patients stay anesthetized during intensive procedures. Past research has suggested that certain brain areas, like the parietal cortex and thalamus, are critical to consciousness. In the study, published in Neuron, a team of scientists used electrodes to stimulate various parts of the brains of two macaque monkeys. Macaque brains closely mirror...

To date, health authorities in Mexico’s largely rural Durango state have documented 79 meningitis cases over the past few months. Meningitis is typically associated with painful inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, often caused by a virus or in some cases bacteria or a fungal infection. The first case of meningitis in Durango was confirmed late last year when doctors diagnosed several cases of aseptic meningitis, an especially harmful inflammation of the brain. The infected patients in Durango had all been subjected to surgeries that used spinal anesthesia in private hospitals in the sprawling state’s capital...

People who use cannabis may need more anesthesia during procedures, but many remain wary of mentioning their habitThere’s a surprising side effect of a marijuana habit that many people don’t know: Regular users may need more anesthesia during medical procedures to remain sedated. As more states allow people to smoke pot and eat edibles legally, more doctors say they are asking about marijuana use—and urging honesty—before surgeries or procedures because habitual users may need more anesthesia and painkillers. In one study, people who reported they used cannabis required more anesthesia than people who didn’t use it. “It’s incredibly important to...

A Dutch teenager completely forgot his native tongue after waking up from surgery and could only speak English, doctors have revealed. The unidentified 17-year-old boy, thought to be from Maastricht, was in hospital for a knee operation following an injury during a football match. But after he awoke from the anesthesia, he was unable to speak or understand any of the medics, who were speaking in Dutch. Instead, he was only able to talk in English — a language he had only been learning at school and never used outside of the classroom. The boy also failed to recognise his...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The governor signed a bill Monday that makes Utah the first state to require doctors to give anesthesia to women having an abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy or later. The bill signed by Republican Gov. Gary Herbert is based on the disputed premise that a fetus can feel pain at that point. "The governor is adamantly pro-life. He believes in not only erring on the side of life, but also minimizing any pain that may be caused to an unborn child," Herbert spokesman Jon Cox said. Many doctors in Utah and across the country...

On Monday, the Utah State Senate voted 20-3 to pass legislation requiring any abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy to include anesthesia for the preborn baby. The bill, SB 234, is based on a body of medical research strongly indicating that preborn children are capable of feeling pain around 20 weeks. Current law only requires abortionists to inform women of fetal pain and offer anesthesia as an option. It contains one amendment waiving the requirement in cases of the mother’s health (a standard pro-lifers fear is too broad under the Supreme Court’s definition of health, and could theoretically exempt any...

A just posted video of a girl who had wisdom teeth pulled. She thinks a lizard is in her mouth and her lips are hotdogs. Hilarious!

Joan Rivers’ personal doctor snapped a selfie while the comedian was under ­anesthesia and the physician was about to perform an unauthorized biopsy that led to her fatal cardiac arrest, a report said Tuesday. The doctor took the photo in the procedure room at Manhattan’s Yorkville Endoscopy before performing the procedure on Rivers’ vocal cords, according to CNN. A staffer at the clinic told investigators about the doctor’s behavior, the cable-TV network said. …

As Joan Rivers’ prognosis grows more dire each day, RadarOnline.com has learned that medical investigators are growing ever closer to uncovering the real reason the healthy 81-year-old was sent spiraling into a coma after a standard medical procedure. And according to insiders, they believe the culprit could be a fatal dose of Propofol — the same drug that killed Michael Jackson after he was administered a lethal dose. “Certainly, they suspect the anesthesia was the issue, based on conversations between the staff and city medics,” a source close to the investigation told Radar.

[Video poster's] brother broke his arm in a hockey tournament & they had to re-break his arm to put it back in place. So they gave him a general anesthetic & he had the greatest reaction to it.

Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have called it "the magic drug," able to halt severe depression and suicidal thoughts in patients within a matter of hours. Ketamine, used as an anesthetic in human and veterinary medicine, has emerged in the past few years as a promising, rapid-acting antidepressant. When administered intravenously at low doses, it can lift symptoms of deep depression within hours, for seven to 10 days. Typical antidepressants, which act on the neurotransmitter serotonin, take a month or more for full effect.

How many of you have not been able to get a drug you needed to properly deliver anesthesia to a patient?” I asked. Every hand in the room went up. “How did that affect your patients?” I asked. “Two of our patients died,” one woman answered. I was speaking to a group of nurse anesthetists, enrolled in a business management program at Marshall University in West Virginia. I wish I could say their experience is unusual. It isn’t. About 90 percent of all the anesthesiologists in the country report they are experiencing a shortage of at least one anesthetic. Drug...

Colorado has joined 15 other states in allowing advanced-practice nurses to administer anesthesia without a doctor's supervision. Anesthesiologists fought the proposal, saying it would put lives at risk

(CNN) -- When Carol Weiher was having her right eye surgically removed in 1998, she woke up hearing disco music. The next thing she heard was "Cut deeper, pull harder." She desperately wanted to scream or even move a finger to signal to doctors that she was awake, but the muscle relaxant she'd received prevented her from controlling her movements. "I was doing a combination of praying and pleading and cursing and screaming, and trying anything I could do but I knew that there was nothing that was working," said Weiher, of Reston, Virginia. Weiher is one of few people...

“Every medical student learns an old adage: You can skimp on some medicine, but you can’t skimp on obstetrics or anesthesiology. An elderly surgeon explained it to me this way, ‘In surgery, people die in days and weeks—a doctor has time to fix a mistake. But in obstetrics and anesthesiology, they die in minutes and seconds.’” – Dr. Ronald Dworkin Among the myriad of deplorable misanthropic schemes under Obama Care, which should properly be called Obama-Soros care, one of the most afflictive is the administration’s dedication to cost cutting by way of reducing such frivolous frills as anesthesia. “Incredibly, Congress’s...

With all the medical miracles scientists have discovered, pain management is still one area with a lot of holes. Most heavy duty pain killers make you unconscious or just dopey. Then there is that other problem of stomach distress and kidney problems which sometimes accompany use of pain killers and anesthesia. Dr. Alexander Binshtok of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine might have found the key to killing pain without any of those side effects and its a really hot idea. Binshtok found a way to use chili peppers as a base for a revolutionary new pain killer:

Stephanie Kuleba's motto on her MySpace page was "live your life." But hers was cut tragically short after something went terribly wrong Friday in a doctor's office where she was undergoing breast surgery. The West Boca High School cheerleader, 18, died Saturday from complications during surgery to correct asymmetrical breasts and inverted nipples, after being rushed to Delray Medical Center Friday morning.According to her family's attorney, a rare and silent condition called malignant hyperthermia could have killed the popular teen, who was looking forward to her senior prom and heading to the University of Florida.The condition is triggered by anesthesia....

The Inconvenient Truth About Organ Donations Physician sounds alarm about unethical or at least highly questionable practices of organ transplant industry By Steve Jalsevac September 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - There has been growing concern over the past several years about increasingly aggressive measures undertaken to harvest human organs from dying patients. Dr. John Shea, a Toronto physician who has specialized in researching the issue, has just completed a report, Organ donation: The inconvenient truth, that sounds an alarm about the unethical or at least highly questionable practices of the organ transplant industry. The article is published in the September issue...