Anesthesia

• Full anesthesia is devoted for particular plastic surgery operations (liftings, breast hypertrophy, extended abdominoplasty …) or for some patients that ask in person for this type of anesthesia.

Even if we assume that technological progress of anesthesia and constant monitoring ensure the best conditions of security, there still exist risks and hazards at the pre-post surgical levels, risks that are inherent in any medical act and that will call for detailed explanations with each individual case.

PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN PRIOR TO ANESTHESIA:

The anesthetist doctor whom you have seen in pre-surgical consultation will be the best person to give you the most suited advice in your case.

• If it is the case of general anesthesia, it is essential that you refrain from eating, that is no water, no food, and no smoking for at least 8 hours before the operation. If you need to take any medication, the anesthetist doctor will have explained to you what to take how, and when.
• Obviously, you will avoid any form of make-up, or varnish on the nails when you are in the operating room.
• False teeth, glasses and contact lenses, hearing aids will be left in your room or handed in to a nurse.

PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN AFTER ANESTHESIA:

It is common that after a full anesthesia, the patient will feel tired for a number of days. The post-surgical treatment will be best suited and advocated by the anesthetist who will recommend the necessary vitamins and stimulants to resume normal activities in the fastest possible way.

On the anesthetist’s consent, it will be possible to resume taking a normal diet hours after the operation and your first time out of bed must be done in the presence of a nurse.

In any case, when you are about to leave the clinic, whether this is going to be the same day for partial or ambulatory anesthesia or the day after or even the days that follow, a prior examination by a doctor will be on schedule. That doctor will be in a position to authorize your exit. In all cases, a regular contact will be maintained between you and the medical service/department to make sure that the consequences have been simple and normal.

It is your doctor who will tell you depending on the type of anesthesia you have had and the operation you have undertaken, when you can resume a normal activity, when, in particular, you can drive, practice sports or bask under the sun.

ANESTHESIA’S RELATED RISKS

All operations include risks of complications. This risk is all the weaker once you have had a pre-surgical check-up and that the suitable treatment has been applied. Such a treatment must take into account the age of the patient, his/her lifestyle, and factors related to health and to probable illnesses with on-going treatment.

If the complications are rare, it is necessary that they will be fully explained in a prior information session. It is for this purpose that the total number of incidents inherent in any anesthetic move will be explained and defined at great length here.

COMPLICATIONS OF A GENERAL NATURE:

• Blood bruises; infection, inflammation.
• Venous Thrombosis with stone formation at the level of veins.
• Inflammation of punctured vessels, irritation at the level of upper or lower limbs in the form of swarming, sensation of heaviness.
• Pulmonary embolism through migration of blood stone at a pulmonary level.
• Trouble of sensitiveness, very often transitory at the level of the puncture site.
• Difficultés de déglutition, enrouement, modification de la voix avec irritation des cordes vocales dûs à la présence de la sonde d’intubation.
• Lesion of a tooth or false teeth following an intubation.
• Digestion troubles in the form of nausea, post-surgical vomiting.
• Regurgitation of gastric liquid with risks of inhalation and pulmonary infection.

This risk occurs mainly when refraining from food hasn’t been observed.

• Sensitive or driving nervous irritation through a compression of a nerve if an operating position

has been maintained for a long time.

• Headaches and migraines.
• Possible allergic reaction with a rush of the kind that is itching or hurting.

• Decrease in sight acuity, rarely irreversible, most often transitory and soon corrected by a suitable treatment.
• Urination troubles necessitating a urinary probe.

These signs and symptoms are usually regressive.

Certain complications may be more serious:

• Risks of infections such as viral hepatitis or risk of H.I.V. transmission.
• Anaphylactic shock following a major allergic reaction.
• Troubles related to heart beat and vascular say even respiratory failure.
• Massive embolism with or without patent phlebitis.

After the consultation, the anesthetist doctor himself/herself will inform the patient of risks related to anesthesia. It must be known that anesthesia can induce at times some unpredictable reactions in the human system, and they are more or less easy to get under control.

The fact that one goes to see a perfectly competent anesthetist, operating in a situation which is truly surgical leads to a considerable decrease of risks that one is likely to have. One must also know, indeed, that techniques and products related to anesthesia as well as monitory methods have witnessed considerable progress in the last 20 years, offering thus maximum security, essentially when the operation is performed outside the emergency room and when the subject is in good health and this seems to be the case for all cosmetic operations.