By patient and by surgery

How anaesthesia changes for heart, lung, kidney and liver disease, pregnancy, children, older adults and each kind of surgery.

17 pages

• Ambulatory surgery and anaesthesia outside the operating roomSame-day surgery and sedation or anaesthesia given in places like endoscopy, scanners or the…
• Anaesthesia for cardiac surgery, in principleHeart operations often stop the heart while a machine pumps and oxygenates the blood; the…
• Diabetes and other endocrine diseaseDiabetes, high blood pressure and hormone-making tumours change how the body handles stress…
• ENT surgery and the shared airwayIn ear, nose and throat surgery the surgeon works in the airway the anaesthetist must keep open…
• Eye surgeryMost eye operations are done awake with numbing drops or an injection around the eye; the team…
• Neuromuscular disease and anaesthesiaDiseases of nerves and muscles change how muscle relaxants work and weaken breathing, so…
• Neurosurgery and raised intracranial pressureInside the skull there is little room; anaesthesia for brain surgery keeps pressure down and…
• Obstetric anaesthesia and caesarean sectionAnaesthesia for a pregnant woman, usually for caesarean birth, where two patients are cared for…
• Orthopaedic surgery: tourniquets, cement and blood lossBone and joint operations bring their own dangers, such as tourniquet pain, reactions to bone…
• Paediatric anaesthesiaAnaesthesia for babies and children, whose airways, breathing and drug handling differ from…
• The older patientAnaesthesia for older adults, who have less reserve, take more medicines and are more prone to…
• The patient with heart disease having non-cardiac surgeryA weak or narrowed heart copes badly with the stress of surgery, so the anaesthetist plans to…
• The patient with kidney diseaseWeak kidneys clear many anaesthetic drugs slowly and struggle with potassium and fluid, so…
• The patient with liver diseaseA scarred liver clears drugs slowly, makes fewer clotting proteins and copes badly with low…
• The patient with lung disease (asthma, COPD, OSA)Asthma, chronic lung disease and sleep apnoea make the airway twitchy or easily blocked, so…
• Thoracic surgery and one-lung ventilationIn chest surgery one lung is often deflated so the surgeon can work; the other lung must carry…
• Trauma and emergency surgeryAnaesthesia for an injured or acutely ill patient who may be bleeding, has a full stomach and…

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← Anaesthesia and critical care

Educational content; it does not replace supervised training, your institution's protocols or the anaesthetist's or intensivist's decision. It contains no doses and no ventilator or infusion settings.

Representative model, for educational purposes only.