Expert: Ronald Levy, M.D. - 12/28/2009

Question

I'm very worried about my sister going into the UHW to have her tonsils and adnoids out the reason that I am really worried is that the last couple off times she has had a general for a VP Shunt and a Gastroestomy (mikey button) but she took such a long time to come around they told us on serveal occasions that she may not come through this and we should prepair for the worst. I would like to know if this one could potentially you know. my second question is,

Talking from experience from serveral aneathetics myself and my sisters frighten the aneasthetist who then make me feel very uneasy about going under because once when I was I think about 15 i'm now 18, I had a general but as you can understand I was nervous and the aneasthetist had eaither had a very bad day at work but he was so rude and unhelpful that I refused to have a general although i think he managed to get me under because I woke up and the procedure had been done.

my final question is I have had many anesthetics in my time for various reasons, but when I had my appendix out around 10 months ago I had 3 aneasthetists and one seemed to be doing most off the work and the others were talking to me and trying to calm me down as i was very upset and distressed but what i did not get was the fact that one placed two fingers on my throat and I have athing about people touching my throat no idea why they did it why would they off done that??? Thank you for taken your time to read this.

Donna

Answer
Let me start with the 3rd question. The fingers on your throat are for"cricoid pressure". What this does is to help prevent aspiration of stomach contents into your lungs. We don't normally need to do this but you were having emergency surgery which means you potentially had a full stomach ans were more at risk for aspiration. They should have explained this to you.

I don't understand what your second question is. The paragraph is disjoint and I doon;t find a question to answer!

As for your first question, there is nothing to worry about. Each person takes different amounts of time to recover from anesthesia but there is no reason to believe that she will not recover this time.

Ronald Levy, MD
Professor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston