Word: anesthesia
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...poor-risk" patient with a failing heart, because the circulation may collapse entirely. To get around this hazard, Drs. Glenn and Artusio went back to a 100-year-old medical observation that had never been put to practical use, i.e., the fact that when the ether of ordinary anesthesia is wearing off, surgery can still go on, because for a while the patient feels no pain...
...distinct from local anesthesia, which is impractical for major chest surgery...
...Most dangerous of the drugs is curare, a muscle relaxant better known as the poison with which South American Indians tip their arrows. It accounts for one-third of the deaths caused by anesthesia: one death per 370 patients. When used in combination with ether, curare becomes more hazardous, causing one death per 250 patients. Administered during major surgery, the curare death rate soared to one death out of 192 patients...
Should curare and other risky medications (e.g., thiopental, cyclopropane) be banned from the hospitals? Beecher and Todd think not. But they urge that the drugs "available at present be considered on trial . . . employed only when there are clear advantages to be gained." The doctors regard anesthesia as a public-health problem. Applied to the entire U.S., the mortality rate uncovered by Beecher and Todd indicates that some 5,100 Americans die each year from anesthesia...
Dentists, as well as surgeons, have good cause to be wary of the use of anesthesia. Eighteen to 20 patients die in the U.S. each year from anesthesia in dentists' offices. Most common cause of death is brain damage from hypoxia (shortage of oxygen) caused by improper mixture of anesthetic gas, which should never contain less than 20% oxygen. The patient may survive a dose of gas that contains less than this minimum, but if it is prolonged or repeated, he may undergo personality changes or survive only as a moronic "vegetable." One dentist's proposed antidote...