Narcosis

A state of deep artificial sleep caused by the use of certain chemicals or physical factors and accompanied by loss of sensation, consciousness and voluntary movements. In medicine, anesthesia is used as a type of pain relief, primarily during surgical operations. The first operation under ether anesthesia was performed in 1846 by the American surgeon Warren, anesthesia was given by Morton.

In Russia, ether anesthesia was first used by F.I. Inozemtsev and N.I. Pirogov in 1847. Pirogov was the first in the world to use ether anesthesia in military field conditions, and he also wrote the first manual on ether anesthesia. For a long time, only ether and chloroform were used for anesthesia. Advances in chemistry contributed to the discovery of a number of substances that cause anesthesia.

Depending on the route of administration of the drug into the patient’s body, the following types of anesthesia are distinguished: inhalation (the drug is administered through the respiratory tract), intravenous, rectal, intraosseous, intramuscular and subcutaneous. If two or more routes of administration of a narcotic substance are used simultaneously, then such anesthesia is called combined.

For inhalation anesthesia, vapors of ether, fluotane, cyclopropane, chloroform (rarely), nitrous oxide, etc. are used. For inhalation anesthesia, special equipment is used that allows strictly dosing the amount of inhaled narcotic substance; administration of the drug in a mixture with oxygen practically eliminates complications from the respiratory tract .

For intravenous anesthesia, hypnotics are mainly used - substances that are derivatives of barbituric acid. The advantage of intravenous anesthesia is the rapid onset of sleep and the complete absence of unpleasant sensations for the patient.

Intraosseous anesthesia is a type of intravenous anesthesia and is used in those rare cases when the saphenous veins are poorly developed, for example, in children. Rectal anesthesia, as well as intramuscular and subcutaneous anesthesia, is rarely used in surgical practice.

Most often, combined intravenous and inhalation anesthesia is used. They begin with the introduction of a narcotic substance intravenously: when the patient falls asleep, they switch to inhalation anesthesia, injecting the drug using a special tube directly into the patient’s windpipe.

The use of special drugs during anesthesia that turn off the patient’s spontaneous breathing and transfer him to breathing carried out by an anesthesia machine allows the anesthetist (anesthesiologist) performing anesthesia to control all functions of the patient’s body, depending on the type and traumatic nature of both the entire operation and individual its stages.

Thanks to this, surgical interventions such as operations on the lungs, heart, large vessels, and brain became possible. Advances in modern anesthesia have led to local anesthesia being used less frequently.

In addition to anesthesia caused by the introduction of various chemicals, electronarcosis is used for special indications. For electronic anesthesia, special devices are used, with the help of which the brain is exposed to currents of specially selected frequencies.