Anesthesia is a combination of medicine that puts you in a sleeplike state before a procedure, where your brain doesn’t respond to pain signals or reflexes. Anesthesia can take the form of an intravenous drug or can be inhaled, and is administered by a specialist called an anesthesiologist, often with the help of a registered nurse anesthetist.
What different types of anesthesia are used, and why?
There are three main types of anesthesia:
- General anesthesia renders you completely unconscious. It’s used for longer procedures.
- Regional anesthesia switches off the feeling from a specific part or region of the body, such as during a lower limb surgery.
- Local anesthesia is used to numb a small area, often accompanied with light sedation.
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Is Anesthesia Safe?
Anesthesia is quite safe for most people—only about 1 in every 100,000 to 200,000 patients die from complications involving anesthesia—and complications are usually more to do with the underlying procedure that’s happening, rather than anesthesia itself.
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What Should Proper Anesthesia Treatment Look Like?
Before your procedure
Your doctors and caregivers have a responsibility to ask the right questions and consider all the angles before putting you under. They should get a clear picture of your health history, especially past complications with or allergies to anesthesia. They should also consider the various factors that make using anesthesia more risky, including if you are older, if your other medications clash with anesthesia, as well as if you smoke, do drugs, have heart/kidney/lung conditions, have diabetes, or are overweight. Once they get a good picture of your health, they should give you clear information on your options and how to proceed. For example, anesthesia carries extra risk for the elderly, so you should understand exactly what you’re being asked to do.
Next, once anesthesia has been greenlit, your doctors need to give you the right information to help your body prepare. That can include avoiding certain medication like aspirin, fasting, switching diabetes medicines, and avoiding certain herbal remedies. These steps help avoid ugly complications.
There are also situations, such as C-sections and emergency surgeries, where you won’t have time to talk things over, and it’s up to your providers to take these factors into consideration and treat you safely in the heat of the moment.
Finally, it’s up to your doctors to take all this information and preparation and decide on the right dose, the right time to use it, and deliver it correctly. Failure to do so might leave you dangerously sedated for too long, or lacking the protection you need.
During your procedure
Once things are underway, doctors must carefully monitor your vital signs like blood, oxygen, and fluids to make sure things are going smoothly, and to avoid traumatic complications such as intraoperative awareness, a rare situation where a patient is slightly conscious and might be able to see, hear, or even feel pain when they aren’t supposed to. If things go wrong, it’s up to doctors to then make the right calls and potentially provide additional medications, fluids, and even blood transfusions.
After your procedure
To conclude, your doctors must then safely reverse the anesthesia, bring you back to full consciousness, and monitor for side-effects such as nausea, vomiting, and a sore throat from an inserted oxygen tube.
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What Kind of Injuries Does Anesthesia Error Cause?
Anesthesia, when given to you incorrectly, can cause a variety of harms. If poorly inserted, oxygen tubes that maintain your air supply can damage the trachea, cause muscle spasms in the larynx or bronchial tubes, and damage the mouth and voice box.
If you’re given too much local anesthesia, that can cause system toxicity, which can impact breathing, the heartbeat, and blood pressure.
Regional anesthesia is often injected near a bundle of nerves on the spine or chest, and mistakes can cause nerve damage, weakness, soreness, and lung problems or infection.
General anesthesia errors, meanwhile, can cause harms such as food or liquid getting stuck in the lungs or trachea if the patient hasn’t been properly prepared. If doctors fail to see past patient or family history involving similar problems or strokes, patients can experience malignant hyperthermia, a complication where anesthesia provokes a high fever. If you have sleep apnea, and doctors fail to monitor you, your throat can close during surgery, making it harder for you to regain consciousness and breathe. Other errors, such as a failure to monitor blood flow, can cause strokes, permanent brain damage, or death while under anesthesia. Older people, or those with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, might risk long term memory problems and cognitive dysfunction if using anesthesia, so doctors should factor that in accordingly.
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How Long do I Have to Bring a Lawsuit for Anesthesia Malpractice in Minnesota?
Under Minnesota law, you usually have 4 years to bring a malpractice case against your doctor or hospital.
What Relief can I get out of a Medical Malpractice Suit for Anesthesia Error?
Malpractice robs you of your peace of mind, and a medical malpractice suit can help take back some of what you’ve lost. There are no caps on damages in Minnesota, and you are eligible to recover resources which help you meet a number of challenges, including:
- Medical bills and costs
- Lost income
- Past bodily and mental harm, including:
- Pain
- Disability
- Disfigurement
- Embarrassment
- Emotional distress
- Future bodily and mental harm, including:
- Pain
- Disability
- Disfigurement
- Embarrassment
- Emotional distress
Minnesota medical malpractice lawyers help people with anesthesia error complications.
It can be confusing, painful, and time-consuming to sort out what went wrong, but you don’t have to do it alone. If you call us, we may be able to use our network of lawyers and medical experts to review your records and help get you the relief you need, including compensation for medical bills, future treatment, lost income, and pain and suffering.
You’ve already been let down once, which is why we operate under a contingency fee structure for maximum fairness: we only receive payment if we help you get what you deserve, either a settlement or victory at trial.
Get in touch with us here if you’re ready to have allies who understand.
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