Risks and complications of anesthesia
Since the beginning of the first operations under anesthesia a lot has happened in modern medicine. However, new methods do not change the fact that anaesthesia is in principle not without danger. For despite all the precautions and developments of the last decades, anesthesia remains a high-risk medical procedure in which risks and complications cannot be completely ruled out.
Worldwide, within the member states of the World Health Organization, around 230 million operations are performed annually using general anesthesia, and the trend is rising. The number of operations does not exclude complications. Complications that can be linked to anesthesia have been investigated in studies.
A European study could bring 0.69 per 100,000 deaths concretely in relation to anesthesiological measures. Anaesthesia is one of these measures. Overall, the mortality rate, i.e. the proportion of people who die because of anesthesia, is relatively low.
The percentage of people who die due to complications during surgery that do not fall within the scope of anesthesiology is much higher. A study from the United States shows the percentage distribution of the reasons for the death of patients. According to this study, the main reason for death from anesthesia is an overdose of the anesthetic in 46.6% of cases.
Just behind this, 42.5% of deaths are due to side effects of the anaesthetic. Only 3.6% of deaths are related to pregnancy according to the study. When interpreting these figures, it should be taken into account that they indicate the anesthesiological measures as the reason for the death of the patients.
Even in older patients or persons with relevant concomitant diseases in poor condition, the deaths can be classified in the low range (27/100. 000 – 55/100. 000).
Apart from the rare deaths, there are other complications that can occur with general anesthesia. Rare complications of anaesthesia are bruises or heavier bleeding, which can occur when anaesthetics are injected and require medical treatment. Infections caused by an existing catheter, which can be responsible for the occurrence of sepsis, for example, are extremely rare.
The same is true for nerve damage, which can become noticeable after the operation with a numbness, pain and inability to move. A more frequent complication is damage that can be caused by positioning during the operation.These complications usually manifest themselves as temporary paralysis and slight skin damage, which, however, usually disappears after a few days. As with most medications, allergic reactions sometimes occur with anaesthetics.
In most cases, however, only slight allergic reactions occur, in rare cases an allergic shock, which must be treated with intensive care. A common complication after surgery is hoarseness and difficulty swallowing, which are caused by intubation and in most cases disappear on their own. Intubation can also cause damage to teeth, and even tooth loss.
A complication, which is of great concern to many people who are about to be anaesthetized, is that they may witness the operation despite the anaesthetic (medical: awareness). Since such an experience can have serious psychological consequences in 10%-30% of cases, these concerns are not unfounded. However, the frequency with which this phenomenon occurs is about 0.1% to 0.15%, and is therefore very low.
Overall, life-threatening complications that can be associated with anesthesia are pleasingly rare. Nevertheless, even with state-of-the-art anesthesiological procedures, complications cannot be prevented and in some cases even lead to the death of the patient. This is partly due to the fact that nowadays operations are performed on patients whose general condition is considered poor due to severe concomitant diseases. If there are any concerns before surgery due to the need for general anesthesia, these should be mentioned during the anesthesia consultation before the surgery. and anesthesia complications
