What does it feel like having general anasthetic? Will I feel pain? Will I wake up?

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The mortality rate attributable to anesthesia alone (not related to the reason that the patient is undergoing anesthesia - i.e., if a patient is undergoing emergency surgery for a bleeding ulcer and they die of blood loss during the operation, that's NOT attributable to anesthesia) is about 1 in 100,000.

When people die as a result of issues surrounding anesthesia, it is most commonly because of a problem securing or maintaining an open airway. A substantial amount of the evaluation and preparation anesthesiologists do prior to surgery involves making sure this isn't going to be an issue.

Another related problem is cardiac stress, and heart attacks in and around the time of surgery. Although this isn't necessarily attributable directly to anesthesia, this is often an avoidable problem as we can make fairly accurate assessments of patient cardiac risk prior to surgery. Risks that are unacceptably high can be minimized using proper medical management, and for those people who have dangerous issues with their hearts prior to elective surgery, sometimes they need to undergo cardiac surgery first.

I have not had general anesthesia myself, but I have had thousands of patients who have. The process is uniform, and so the experiences are common. The patient typically receives a dose of a sedating medication prior to rolling back into the operating room. They arrive, already a little bit sleepy. More importantly, they aren't laying down crisp memory at that point. Following this, the patient is given a series of medications that render them unconscious, and then a breathing tube is placed. The machine delivers anesthetic gas along with oxygen from that point on, and this continues to maintain the patient in an unconscious state. Close monitoring of the patient helps make sure that the medications continue to be dosed correctly throughout the operation, and then when, at the end, the medications are turned off, the patient wakes up fairly rapidly. Usually within about 5 minutes of the time that we put on the bandages, the patient is awake.

The patient is given further medications as they awaken, including anti-nausea medication, pain medication and sometimes further sedation. Most of the time the patient is still pretty sleepy as they wheel into the recovery room.

After the day of surgery, most people describe their memories of the time before surgery, they may not remember going into or coming out of the operating room, and then they remember being in the recovery room and feeling groggy. Even though the patient is awake when they roll into and then out of the operating room, they are too medicated to remember much about this part.

The length of the operation is unrelated to people's experiences of anesthesia. Short or long operations, the patient tends to report feeling as though they go down and then come right back up.

Depending on the type of operation and the type of anesthesia being employed, there can be a wide variety of techniques to employ in terms of pain control. We cannot do procedures without having people experience pain afterward, but we can do a pretty good job of making it dull instead of sharp, and of making it generally tolerable.

If you are about to undergo elective surgery, I wish you the best.

... I hope that helps.

You feel the needle, then you wake up.

You may feel pain from whatever procedure you're under for. (Be sure to let them know if you do--they'll fix you right up.) You'll be groggy.

You won't feel a thing and it will be over before you know it. The worst part is worring about it before it happens....afterwards you'll be saying, "nothing to it". Good luck!

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What does it feel like having general anasthetic? Will I feel pain? Will I wake up?

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