Robert Whitfield MD explains that waking during surgery is extremely unlikely because anesthesia has about 20 safety checkpoints and continuous monitoring. Providers detect when anesthesia is lightening and intervene before you become aware. Complex surgeries over four hours may need higher-level monitoring.
Just, you know, because this question comes up quite a bit, I'm just going to attack it up front like they're.
Going to wake up.
They're not going to wake up during surgery. No wake up during surgery. And unfortunately, you know, media, movies, everybody has glamorized this idea of awareness and I'm going to wake up during surgery. Awareness under anesthesia. That's what we call it in anesthesia and in, in healthcare. So for people coming for elective surgery, that is not going to happen. Or there are about 20 different stop checkpoints that would happen. Or notify us as the anesthesia provider that you were, that your anesthetic was starting to get light before that would ever, ever, ever take place. This is not going to happen. I understand that fear and that unknown, but that is very known to us. So I, I can tell immediately what's going on while you're actually asleep.
So when people say like or want to know like, what it's like, I can tell you waking up too quickly, bad for you. So everybody's worried about waking up during surgery and then being under anesthesia for a longer period of time. Somehow in the, whatever information or disinformation world, however we choose to describe this world, it's become concerning, you know, hour over hour over hour that you're under anesthesia, which to a degree I understand, won't operate over four to five hours outpatient surgery for a lot of reasons. Those patients who have very extended periods of surgery and, or blood loss and or changes physiologically need to be monitored typically overnight or in a more, you know, hospital type setting, if you want to think of it like that. So there's a level of care that's different but for his team. And he can speak to this specifically. Like, if I'm a patient under anesthesia, I want the appropriate level of care during that, you know, one and a half to four and a half hour period because it actually makes it easier for the anesthesia provider to then wake me up when surgery is complete.
And we kind of, our litmus test across the board is if we would not do the same thing for our mothers, our family, our wives, our friends, then it has no place in our practice. So if there is an optimal anesthetic, and I would have, if my, if my wife had to have surgery tomorrow and I would do it a certain way, I want that done for every one of our patients because that is, in my mind, the optimal anesthetic. They're the exact same anesthetic that I would do for my wife I would do for anyone that I've taken care of in your family. So it truly is about making that that patient experience is absolutely good as possible.
