Modern Anesthesia
Unlike the anesthetists of yesteryears, who utilized a single agent like ether or chloroform alone for anesthesia, the present day anesthetists use different drugs for specific effects. This helps them avoid using large doses (which caused dangerous side effects at times) of a single drug that was often required to produce sleep, lack of pain sensation & muscle relaxation simultaneously.
The later part of the 19th century also saw the development of anesthetics that could be administered through the veins as an injection and machines (known as workstations) that would continuously monitor the patients' vital parameters. The anaesthetist could therefore, now, pick up changes in the patient’s heart, pulse and blood pressure and quickly take remedial steps if required.
Advances in technology helped develop machines that could monitor not just the level of oxygen or carbon dioxide in the patient's blood but even the anesthetic gases used, so that the anesthetist can fine tune the amount of anesthetic needed. Almost every organ in the body can be monitored during the course of an operation involving that particular organ. If aviation scientists send people soaring to the skies, safely, on supersonic jets, so do anesthetists plunge the patients into a painless sleep, safely, during surgery.
Thus, today, one could have anesthesia for the most complicated surgeries that could stretch for hours or you could have an anesthetic in the morning for a short surgery and walk home by evening to have dinner in the comfort of your home. From fragile premature babies to the frail elderly individual, anesthesia can be administered to almost everyone. Anesthesia today is safe and indispensable to the patient. It has developed as a versatile speciality of modern medicine and surgery catered to by a promising team of specialists and technicians.
The foundation of modern anesthesia and surgery was laid by brave doctors who experimented with the various agents on themselves. Modern anesthesia owes a lot to doctors like Horace Wells and August Bier who had the conviction in their discovery, were dedicated to the profession and wanted to make their patients experience surgery without pain.
