Do anesthetics endure the operation for life?

Paediatric anaesthesia ensures infants, neonates, kids and children receive a safer anesthesia that keeps them comfortable during surgical and diagnostic procedures. The term safe use of anesthesia, as it is ill-defined and also potentially misleading. It implies that specific combinations of anesthetic agents may cause harm in early childhood and are primarily responsible for poor long-term neurological outcomes following surgery in young children. Certainly, improvement in the ability of pediatric surgeons to manage congenital conditions of new-borns has been dramatic. The growth in neonates has been broad and deep including such elements as increased knowledge of the development of the central nervous system, an understanding of the development of respiratory control, new insights on psycho social development, and a deeper understanding of cardiovascular physiology. Recognition of the stress response in infants undergoing surgical procedures and the increase in morbidity and mortality associated with this response is a concept. Preoperative transfusion of patients with sickle cell disease, volume repletion for infants with pyloric stenosis, pulmonary stabilization of infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and shrinkage of highly vascular tumor prior to resection are but a few of the many clinical procedures that have improved the safety of infants and children. Children who have developed pulmonary hypertension because of heart or lung disease are at substantial risk for death during the preoperative period. The ability to treat chronic pulmonary hypertension has evolved within the last 20 years providing agents for acute intraoperative management as well as chronic control.

New information, much of it discarded from the field of pediatric medicine - new techniques, new drugs, improved monitoring, as well as increased and standardized training of practitioners, have demonstrably improved the practice of pediatric anesthesia and have reduced morbidity and mortality of infants and children during the preoperative period. This progress, along with the development of improved pediatric surgical skills and the widespread use of laparoscopic surgery has not only saved lives but has improved the quality of the preoperative experience for children and their families.

Goals of Anesthesia

·         Irradiation of pain
·         Unconsciousness
·         Blunting of the stress response
·         Procedure, treatment, and pain relief options
·         Reduce the anxiety in children during surgery