Anaesthesia procedure
- Anaesthetic consultation (premedication)
- Anaesthesia
- In the operating room
- In the anaesthetic recovery room
- Back to your ward
The anaesthetic consultation (premedication)
Prior to a surgery every patient is to go to our Functional Diagnosis Department for being examined by an anaesthesist. This is also where the patient is informed in every detail about the types and potential risks of anaesthesia. Depending on the physical condition of the patient additional examinations may become necessary.
The anaesthesia
All modern anaesthetic approaches are employed in our clinic. There, we particularly focus more or less on the regional anaesthetic techniques, that is spinal anaesthesia as well as peripheral nerve block anaesthesia. Besides, also all different kinds of general anaesthesia as well as combinations of local and general anaesthesia are applied.
When having to perform limb operations we preferably make use of regional anaesthetic methods, as these provide for the option of introducing a pain-killing catheter for postoperative treatment right from the start. Additionally, we thereby free the patient from the common stresses arising from general anaesthesia. On demand, the patient can be administered a sedative to care for greater ease while under regional anaesthesia.
When using general anaesthesia for surgical intervention, on principle the medication causing the (deep) anaesthetic sleep is injected into a vein first. Afterwards, with the patient already being unconscious, the resuscitation tube is introduced into the windpipe, which is then made use of to provide the patient with oxygen and the appropriate anaesthetic gases. Generally this tube can be removed directly after completion of the surgery, while the patient is still in the wakening phase following anaesthesia.
In the operating room
The perparatory anaesthetic steps are taken in the ante-room of the operating theatre. During the entire course of the surgery until being transferred to the anaesthetic recovery room the patient is accompanied by the responsible anaesthesist. He or she controls the aenasthetic process and permanently monitors the patient's current state of consciousness as well as the cardiac, circulatory and respiratory functions, employing continuous medical checks in combination with an embracing monitoring screen system.
In the anaesthetic recovery room
As soon as the surgery is completed, the patient is transferred to the anaesthetic recovery room where the anaesthetic-specialising personnel intensely looks after the patient until woken up without complications or being transferred to the intensive care unit. Also analgesic therapy is already commenced directly after the surgery in the recovery room, this then being continued on the orthopaedic ward later on.
In case a patient receives an autohaemotransfusion prior to a planned large-scale orthopaedic surgery, this will be handled in the anaesthetic recovery room as well.
Back to your ward
The anaesthesist who had accompanied the patients during their surgery will visit every single patient the same evening, then asking the patients about how they are feeling and whether they suffer from post-operative pain.
If the patient was equipped with a pain-killing catheter or pump for a more differenciated analgesic therapeutic approach, our pain-alleviating service will come to see him or her twice or three times a day. These visits may be used to adapt the analgesics regimen to the patient's needs in order to enable for painless early mobilisation.