Causes of the risks of anesthesia
The causes of the risks of anesthesia can be, for example, a poor general condition of a patient due to a serious illness or an unknown intolerance of certain anesthetics. The teeth are an important topic when it comes to the risks of anesthesia. Since, in order to secure the airways for anesthesia, one mainly gets to the trachea through the mouth, one must therefore work close to the teeth with the necessary instruments, such as intubation spatulas and intubation tubes.
Now you have to take into account that the anesthetics cause the muscles to slacken, so that the jaws have to be pressed apart with two fingers to achieve a sufficient mouth opening. Furthermore, it must be noted that the spatula is made of a hard material, usually steel. In order to push the tongue, which is also flaccid, out of the way with the spatula and then to reach the epiglottis, a certain sequence of movements is carried out in which the spatula is not leveraged.
The consequence would be that the movement would damage the incisors with the spatula in the worst case. The anesthesiologists are very experienced in intubation, but it can happen from time to time, for example in a life-threatening situation or in case of a malposition of the oral-jaw apparatus, that the teeth are touched. Although there are protective splints, these usually impede the intubation process more than they help.
Which form of anaesthesia has the highest risk of narcosis?
In recent years, anaesthesia procedures and patient monitoring have become increasingly safe, which is why the risk no longer depends so much on the form of anaesthesia, but much more on the patient’s constitution and previous illnesses. However, if one compares the different forms of anaesthesia, one can say that the so-called rapid sequence induction or crash induction has the highest risk. This form of anaesthesia is used for patients who are not fasting but still need to be intubated urgently to prevent stomach contents from entering the lungs.Patients with a dietary leave of less than 6 hours, but also pregnant women and overweight people are considered to be fasting. Since the anaesthetic induction in this procedure has a different sequence than a standard general anaesthetic, there are increased risks.
