The Importance of Anesthesia Essay Example

📌Category: Health, Medicine
📌Words: 689
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 11 April 2022

The idea of being numb to pain during a procedure is something that many people take for granted. Anesthesia, a drug that keeps you from feeling this pain, is widely used in the medical field. Anesthesiologists are one of the highest-paid medical jobs one can attain, meaning they are crucial within the field. In the early nineteenth century, an American dentist named Horace Wells discovered a pain-free way of dentistry by using nitrous oxide. Before perfecting this drug, Wells just wanted a way to make his patients feel comfortable while getting dental procedures done. In 1844, Wells attended a lecture at Union Hall in Hartford, where he was introduced to the idea of “laughing gas” for the first time. During this presentation, the gas had been used on a volunteer had ingested the gas and did not feel pain. Wells had asked the man who spoke at the lecture, Gardner Colton, if he would help with the experimental stage of perfecting this medicine. The first experiment was conducted by using a famous extraction, taking out a wisdom tooth. Once Wells was sure the gas would work on all procedures based on trials he had performed, he had believed he had come up with a medical breakthrough (Gifford, 2015). 

After years of advanced medical research, and the addition of other natural gases like Isoflurane, Sevoflurane, and desflurane, there has been an expansion in types of anesthesia. A local anesthetic, like one Horace Wells used, is used for simple procedures like the removal of teeth, or a non-invasive skin graph. This numbs a small area from pain, keeps the patient awake, and wares off after a few hours. A regional anesthetic blocks pain in a larger part of the body, like a specific limb or area. This type of anesthetic is used for a more invasive or more painful operation like childbirth or surgery on an extremity. One can be conscious during this procedure but can receive additional sedation to sleep. The final type of anesthesia is general anesthesia that is used during surgeries that involve any major organs. One must be put to sleep to perform these invasive surgeries. 

Due to recent studies, scientists have been able to identify that this gas targets different sets of proteins within cells based on the different ways anesthesia is given to a patient. This can help with future studies that will be conducted since scientists are just now using basic research to learn how anesthetics work. Anesthesiology has been going undergoing massive changes around the nation lately. The role of anesthesiologists is rapidly changing in emergency rooms. They are now forced to measure heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and consciousness levels unlike when hospitals first introduced this pain reliever. Recent research on anesthesia makes the field more desirable for medical students due to the salary and demand for these specialty doctors. “Knowing how anesthetics affect pain and consciousness could also lead to new treatments for conditions that affect consciousness, such as epilepsy or coma. Studies of anesthesia may even help us better understand the nature of consciousness itself” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Anesthesia). Anesthesia has become one of the most important additions to the medical field since it helps save and stabilize the lives of people during operations. Millions of patients within hospitals are given at least one form of anesthesia each year. Anesthesia makes surgery possible and safe to perform. 

Although anesthesia prevents one from feeling pain, it can cause side effects during and after a procedure. Many of the effects are temporary and go away within twenty-four hours but there are more serious effects to be aware of. Some effects may differ based on a patients age, previous medical conditions, and health habits. A physician anesthesiologist specializes in preparing a patient for their operation and making sure the patient is healthy and involved in the after care. The development of anesthesia and its study has created about fifty-one thousand jobs around hospitals in the United States (Michas, 2021). The invention and perfection of anesthesia has been groundbreaking to the medical field. As we develop more research about the positivity and use of anesthesia, medical professionals honor Horace Wells as he decided to experiment with nitrate oxide in order to give his patients a better and less painful experience at the dentist. Although there have been many debates about who created anesthesia, it will always be known as one, if not the most important invention in the medical field.

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