Specific Types and Classes
Multiple types are available. Some allow you to be alert and oriented during a medical procedure, while others make sleep so you're unaware of what's going on.
It essentially puts you into a medically induced coma.
This type of anesthesia not only allows a person to undergo a procedure without pain but also allows the person to be unconscious for the procedure.
Some specific types or classes of general anesthesia include:
IV anesthetics sedatives- your anesthesiologist will use your IV line to administer
into your blood. The medication works quickly and typically puts you to sleep in under a minute.
For this reason, its effects can be stopped by stopping the infusion, which will wake you up from it in minutes.
Inhalational anesthetics
The four clinical stages of general anesthesia include induction, maintenance, emergence, and recovery. Induction can be achieved through administration of either an intravenous or inhalation anesthetic. During the maintenance stage, anesthetic agents, intravenous, inhalation, or a combination, are continued to maintain the surgical stage of anesthesia. The emergence phase correlates to the discontinuation of anesthetic agents with the goal attaining near baseline functionality. Organ systems of focus include the cardiovascular, respiratory, and central nervous systems (CNS).
Throughout the procedure, the anesthesiologist will monitor your vital signs, including your heart rate and rhythm, blood pressure, temperature, and body fluid balance, to ensure safety and comfort.
The recovery phase is an extension of the emergence stage whereby the goal is to return the patient back to their baseline state of physiological function.
While most people will start to regain consciousness within a few minutes, it can take several hours to feel completely alert and coherent again.
Patients experiencing delirium or agitation when coming out of anesthesia can also feel hyperactive or experience extreme sluggishness. The researchers believe hyperactivity may result from the microglia intervening too much between the neuron and inhibitory synapses.