 Hey guys welcome back to my channel. Thank you guys so much for watching. Be sure to like and subscribe to my videos. Today we're going to be getting into a topic of what are the different types of anesthesia. So if you've ever done an anesthesia rotation or if you're just a patient and you're about to have anesthesia and you've always wondered about the differences in the types of anesthesia that we get, this video is for you. So first I wanted to talk about general anesthesia which is what most people think of when they think of going to have surgery. General anesthesia is a state of complete unawareness and with a lack of perception of any type of input. So you don't feel, hear or see anything when you're under general anesthesia. So it's a state of complete hypnosis. Think of like a hypnotist that is performing tricks and say at a carnival and they snap their fingers and then after that signal people fall asleep. It's kind of what general anesthesia is doing to you. Most of our medications that we use for anesthesia are great hypnotics. So it basically places you in that state of having no perception of what's going on around you and you go from open cool state to that state very quickly. So we use medications, VIP medications to get you there. That's what we call induction to go from being awake to asleep with those medicines and they work really fast. You'll be pretty quickly put to sleep and then the way that we maintain it is kind of what defines general anesthesia. So having a breathing tool or another breathing assistant device that will help support your breathing and your ventilation while you're under anesthesia is really what sets apart general anesthesia from any other type. So having a breathing tool and a ventilator kind of like this guy is what makes general anesthesia very specific. Other types of anesthesia include sedation. There's a very wide range of levels of sedation where you have anesthesia. So you can have mild, moderate sedation, and conscious sedation is at least in that category to deep sedation. So different areas of different types of surgery really predict what type of sedation is required. And for most currently minor cases, let's say you're going to have something removed from like a superficial site like your skin, like a lump on your skin or a cyst. Let's say on the back of your hand or something like that or on your shoulder or your back might be done with just some sedation or a mild conscious sedation. So that means that just in that definition of the word that we use, we're going to remain conscious. But we will have medications on board that are usually in IV that help you to feel a little bit more relaxed about the situation, less nervous, and also may provide some pain. So we have that level of anesthesia that we give for very minor procedures. And then if your procedures a little bit more involved might give you more IV medications to get you to a deeper stage, which is deep sedation. So we give you more IV medications, some of which are pain medicines as well, but we might give you a little bit of medication that really makes you hypnotized so that you don't really remember what's going on and you're less likely to have discomfort or anxiety with the procedure. In that case, most patients will get a little bit of what we call proper fall. So that's the medication of choice when it comes to giving hypnosis or a deeper level of sedation. Another type of anesthesia that we use often is regional anesthesia. So here we have what we typically use for regional anesthesia for patients that say are having orthopedic surgery to the lower extremity or the lower half of the body, through the umlegs in particular or even the hips. We will use an epidural. This is an epidural kit and this is what we would be placing in. It's a very small teeny tiny catheter. We basically place that in with the guidance of the needle and that allows us to place it into the area of the back that will be close to nerves, not necessarily at them, but near the nerves and give local anesthesia to numb up the nerves. So that's what we would typically use for some regional anesthesia. In addition to that, we might use spinals. So spinals, as you might have heard about, or our injections that are a little bit less long lasting than epidurals and you don't leave any catheters at all. None of that those teeny tiny plastic catheters that I just showed you are left in for spinals. What we do is we just do a single shot of medication that goes the bones between the back just like an epidural and we give that medicine one time and it lasts for the duration of the procedure. We can allow it to last up to three hours plus or minus depending on what we add in to the local anesthetic. And that is a way to provide anesthesia to the hips and the lower extremities for any type of surgery that might involve that. That's another type of anesthesia that we do. A lot of people have questions about, you know, what happens if they're getting original anesthetic. Are they still going to be asleep? Are we going to allow you to be awake and look around? And usually most patients don't prefer that. So what we do in that setting is might give you a little bit of moderate sedation or even sedation to allow you to be nice and comfortable for the procedure. And then what that's happening because it's sedation and it's not general anesthesia, we will provide the urethral oxygen. We might give you a nasal cannula of oxygen to deliver that to you while you're sleeping. Just to keep you nicely oxygenated while you're under that level of sedation. To be concise, general anesthesia, you go completely off to sleep and you are unable to sense anything that's going on around you. So you don't feel any pain, you don't hear any sounds, you don't see anything. That's when you're in an adequate depth of general anesthesia. If you're getting sedation, you might actually hear some sounds around you or you might interact with the person that's doing the procedure. And that's what we want. We actually want you to be able to respond appropriately to a verbal command or to let us know if something is uncomfortable. So nothing is going wrong in that setting. It's just that's what we expect with that level of anesthesia. That is sedation. So that's pretty much it for the different types of anesthesia, trying to keep it concise and to the point. And if you have any questions or comments about what we've discussed here, comment below and I will get back to you and we can continue discussion from there. Thanks so much for tuning in.