I won't wake up after surgery: Odesa surgeon talks about patients' main fear

Modern surgery no longer looks like a scary medical marathon with a long recovery. Patients get up an hour after surgery and go home the next day. However, despite technological breakthroughs and painless interventions, the fear of "not waking up" after anesthesia remains the strongest.

Ivan Beskrovnyi, Head of General Surgery at Odrex Medical Center on Filatova Street, told the Intent about this.

According to the surgeon, thanks to the development of laparoscopic surgery - when operations are performed through small punctures - patients recover quickly, move on their own within an hour after the intervention, and feel minimal or no pain.

"For example, after laparoscopic removal of the gallbladder, a patient can go home within a day. After installing a mesh for an inguinal hernia, the same is true. This is a global trend: the less traumatic the surgery, the shorter the hospital stay," Beskrovnyi said.

He explains that patients used to stay in the hospital longer mainly because of severe postoperative pain. Now, when pain is minimized, prolonged hospitalization is often simply not necessary.

Despite technological progress and comfortable treatment, patients are still afraid of one thing: general anesthesia.

"Anesthesia is the biggest fear. For some reason, everyone has it: "What if I don't wake up?". Although anesthesia today is absolutely controlled. We can perform surgeries under local anesthesia, but sometimes light anesthesia is better: the patient does not feel pain, does not worry," the surgeon explains.

According to him, modern drugs, equipment and anesthesiologists' approach make the anesthesia process as safe as possible.

And doctors themselves have their own professional fears, although they usually don't tell patients about them. One of them is accidentally leaving a foreign object in the patient's body.

"Such cases are almost impossible now, but theoretically they are possible. Especially in difficult situations with heavy bleeding during open surgeries. But every operating room has strict control: everything - both napkins and instruments - is counted by the operating nurse before and after the intervention. This is a safety standard," emphasized Beskrovnyi.

Ірина Глухова