Shahyian Maknajia

ISM 7th period

American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. "Regional Anesthesia for

Surgery." ASRA. Webitects, 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.

https://www.asra.com/page/41/regional-anesthesia-for-surgery

In general anesthesia, you are unconscious and have no awareness. In regional

anesthesia, the anesthesiologist makes an injection near a cluster of nerves to
numb the area of your body that requires surgery.
During minimal sedation, you will feel relaxed, and you may be awake. You can
understand and answer questions and will be able to follow the physician's
instructions.
When receiving moderate sedation, you will feel drowsy and may even sleep
through much of the procedure, but will be easily awakened when spoken to.
During deep sedation, you will sleep through the procedure with little or no
memory of the procedure room.
While you receive sedation during surgery, your vital signs, including heart rate,
blood pressure and oxygen level, will be watched closely in order to avoid sudden
changes.
You may also receive supplemental oxygen during the surgery.
Spinal and epidural blocks are forms of anesthesia that temporarily interrupt
sensation from the trunk and legs by injection of local anesthetic medication in
which contains the spinal cord and spinal nerves.
There are four types of pain relief after surgery: I.V., oral medications, local
anesthesia, and regional blocks.
You can combine both epidural and spinal anesthesia for some patients.
The two commonly used types of medications are opioids and local anesthetics.
In normal doses, narcotics may cause constipation, itching, nausea, retching, or
drowsiness.
Local anesthetics may cause some numbness or, heaviness.
There will be some difficulty with weight bearing on the blocked leg afterwards,
and patients should take care not to fall.
A regional block helps with pain relief and can last for several hours and
depending on the anesthesiologist you can go home with a regional block catheter
on your back.
Most of the time anesthesiologists dont let them take the regional block catheter
home because they might have trouble taking it out or they might injury
themselves in the process.
This source was very informational and self explanatory. This source talked about
things from blocks to epidural anesthesia to spinal anesthesia and to different types of
medicine that anesthesiologists and CRNAs use during and after a surgery.