A brief transcript excerpt from a Ben Greenfield YouTube conversation focused on how the choice and administration of anesthesia strongly influence postoperative recovery and how surgeons can (and should) select their anesthetic team. The speaker emphasizes eliminating opioids and benzodiazepines when possible, the importance of choosing anesthesiologists aligned with the surgeon's approach, and notes that patients are often unaware of who will provide their anesthesia.\n
Does the type of anesthesia you use, like, kind of fit into the equation at all? And this is like how good someone feels or how bad someone feels after the surgery.
It's the biggest factor.
The biggest.
100%, the anesthetics used. And you know, I am a surgeon, not an anesthesiologist, but I'm a surgeon in a setting where I'm operating in my operating room, my space. I purpose built it. You know, I'm hiring the team. I'm not just like at a hospital or something and get assigned who I'm working with. And so I get to choose very carefully who I'm having administer my anesthesia. People of a similar, like, like mindset. Right.
Okay.
And so the first steps were getting rid of narcotics or opioids, you know, better said opioids and benzodiazepines, which are generally for small procedures, the staple anesthetics used, going into any procedure, sort of navigating who to talk to. Because sometimes you've chosen your surgeon very carefully.
Yeah.
And you show up at the surgery center or hospital and you quite literally have no idea who your anesthesiologist it's going to be, which is kind of like mind blowing when you really think about that being the truth. You have no idea.
Well, a lot of people are blissfully unaware of what you've just described and just assume anesthesia is anesthesia.
