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Anesthesia diversion

What is anesthesia diversion?

The anesthetic recovery describes the time between leaving out the anesthetic at the end of the operation and fully regaining all body functions.

Depending on the drug, this waking up process takes different lengths of time. There is no longer any medication running within the diversion and the ventilation tube is removed.

The patient starts breathing again. The patient wakes up and can be brought to the recovery room for supervision.

Process of anesthesia diversion

The anesthesia recovery begins when the surgeon informs the anesthetist that the operation will be completed in the next few minutes. Depending on the type of anesthesia, the anesthetist now turns down the drugs and the anesthetic gas used. At the same time, the oxygen supply to the ventilator is increased, as the excretion is associated with great stress for the body and thus with high oxygen consumption.

When the surgical wound is closed, the anesthetics are completely switched off. The controlled, artificial ventilation is switched to a system that allows the patient to breathe independently. When self-breathing is sufficient to supply the body, artificial ventilation is stopped. The patient is spoken to and woken up.

As soon as a defensive reaction and a cough is observed, the breathing tube can be removed. With the exception of high-risk patients, monitoring is removed for the way to the recovery room.

In the lock, the patient is put back in his bed and connected to the monitoring again in the recovery room. With the handover to the recovery room, the anesthetist ends the recovery. The patient is only allowed to go back to his room after another check.

The next article will tell you about other stages of anesthesia. Read more about this under: Stages of anesthesia

What are the risks of anesthesia?

The discharge and induction of anesthesia can be compared to the take-off and landing of an airplane. Induction and diversion are the high-risk phases of anesthesia. The body has to take over its actual tasks again, which the machine did before.

When the medication is switched off, the patient has to breathe himself. A risk of anesthesia is switching off mechanical ventilation too early and the resulting insufficient oxygen supply to the body. Removing the ventilation hose too early can also mean such an undersupply if the patient's own breathing is not yet sufficient.

In high-risk patients, changing medication can also lead to blood pressure crises and a collapse in the circulatory system. With certain painkillers, additional medication must be given shortly before the end of the procedure, otherwise the patient will react more strongly to pain.

Some patients react with strong movements to the diversion and can fall from the operating table if they are not fixed.

During the evacuation, the anesthetist must be consistently concentrated with the patient in order to avoid possible risks. If there are difficulties in recovery, the anesthesia is restarted.

You can learn more in-depth information on this topic through our next article: Risks of anesthesia

Duration of anesthesia recovery

With good communication in the OR team and short-acting anesthetic drugs, the patient can wake up with the wound closed and ventilation can be stopped. The recovery only takes a few minutes. However, this is only the optimal case. The recovery time can be longer, especially with larger interventions.

An unexpected termination of the operation can lead to very long evacuation times, as some drugs continue to work for too long. An exact prognosis is not possible because every body reacts differently to the anesthetic drugs.

Our next article could also be of interest to you: Aftermath of anesthesia

How can homeopathy support drainage?

Some patients are helped by homeopathic remedies when they wake up. This is said to reduce post-operative nausea and relieve pain.

The actual discharge of the anesthesia cannot be influenced by homeopathy. In the postoperative period, i.e. after the diversion, there are some remedies that are intended to alleviate the consequential damage of the operation and to detoxify the body from the anesthetics.

Since the anesthetics are broken down or exhaled by the body during the elimination phase, the effect has not been proven.

Would you like to know more about this topic? Read our next article on this below: Homeopathy after surgery