Anesthesiology facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Anesthesiology
Anaesthesiology
Anaesthesia
Anaesthetics

An anesthesiologist controlling a patient's airway while inducing anesthesia
Focus	Anesthesia, perioperative medicine
Subdivisions	Intensive care medicine Pain medicine Critical emergency medicine
Specialist	Anesthesiologist Anaesthesiologist Anaesthetist

Anesthesiology, anaesthesiology, or anaesthesia is the medical specialty concerned with the total perioperative care of patients before, during and after surgery. It encompasses anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine, and pain medicine. A physician specialized in anesthesiology is called an anesthesiologist, anaesthesiologist, or anaesthetist, depending on the country. In some countries, the terms are synonymous, while in other countries they refer to different positions, and anesthetist is only used for non-physicians, such as nurse anesthetists.

The core element of the specialty is the prevention and mitigation of pain and distress using various anesthetic agents, as well as the monitoring and maintenance of a patient's vital functions throughout the perioperative period. Since the 19th century, anesthesiology has developed from an experimental area with non-specialist practitioners using novel, untested drugs and techniques into what is now a highly refined, safe and effective field of medicine. In some countries anesthesiologists comprise the largest single cohort of doctors in hospitals, and their role can extend far beyond the traditional role of anesthesia care in the operating room, including fields such as providing pre-hospital emergency medicine, running intensive care units, transporting critically ill patients between facilities, management of hospice and palliative care units, and prehabilitation programs to optimize patients for surgery.

History

Throughout human history, efforts have been made by almost every civilization to mitigate pain associated with surgical procedures, ranging from techniques such as acupuncture or phlebotomy to administration of substances such as mandrake, opium, or alcohol. However, by the mid-nineteenth century the study and administration of anesthesia had become far more complex as physicians began experimenting with compounds such as chloroform and nitrous oxide, albeit with mixed results. On October 16, 1846, a day that would thereafter be referred to as "Ether Day", in the Bullfinch Auditorium at Massachusetts General Hospital, which would later be nicknamed the "Ether Dome", New England Dentist Dr. William Morton successfully demonstrated the use of diethyl ether using an inhaler of his own design to induce general anesthesia for a patient undergoing removal of a neck tumor. The term Anaesthesia was first used by the Greek philosopher Dioscorides, derived from the Ancient Greek roots ἀν- an-, "not", αἴσθησις aísthēsis, "sensation" to describe the insensibility that accompanied the effect produced by the mandrake plant. However, following Dr. Morton's successful exhibition, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. sent a letter to Dr. Morton in which he first to suggested anesthesia to denote the medically induced state of amnesia, insensibility, and stupor that enabled physicians to operate with minimal pain or trauma to the patient. The original term had simply been "etherization" because at the time this was the only agent discovered that was capable of inducing such a state.

Over the next one hundred-plus years the specialty of anesthesiology developed rapidly as further scientific advancements meant that physicians' means of controlling peri-operative pain and monitoring patients' vital functions grew more sophisticated. In the twentieth century neuromuscular blockade allowed the anesthesiologist to completely paralyze the patient pharmacologically and breathe for him or her via mechanical ventilation. With these new tools, the anesthetist could intensively manage the patient's physiology, bringing about critical care medicine, which, in many countries, is intimately connected to anesthesiology.

Historically anesthesia providers were almost solely utilized during surgery to administer general anesthesia in which a person is placed in a pharmacologic coma. This is performed to permit surgery without the individual responding to pain (analgesia) during surgery or remembering (amnesia) the surgery.

Images for kids

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  Photo of prebriefing for mixed modality simulation being used for anesthesia resident training

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  A typical anesthesia machine, which an anesthesiologist can use to store equipment, administer inhalational anesthetics, and properly ventilate an anesthetized patient.

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  This painting by Robert C. Hinckley depicts the first successful public demonstration of using ether to induce anesthesia.

See also

In Spanish: Anestesiología y reanimación para niños