| Abstract: | This issue of the Bulletin deals with the principles of anesthesia for outpatient female sterilization with emphasis on techniques for laparoscopy and minilaparotomy. General anesthesia techniques provide analgesia, amnesia, and muscle relaxation and are particularly useful for managing the anxious patient. Disadvantages include increased expense, need for specialized equipment, and highly trained personnel, and delayed recovery. Complications, though relatively rare, can be life-threatening and include aspiration of stomach contents, hypoxia, hypercarbia, hypotension, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiorespiratory arrest, and death. There is no single preferred technique of general anesthesia, athough most anesthetists employ methods that allow rapid recovery of faculties, enabling the patient to be discharged soon after surgery. To accomplish this end, light anesthesia with sodium thiopental induction and nitrous oxide maintenance is often used. Short duration muscle relaxation with an agent such as succinylcholine supplements this technique. Other techniques include light anesthesia with inhalational anesthetic agents and the use of intravenous ketamine. Local anesthesia augmented by systemic and/or inhalational analgesia is supplanting general anesthesia techniques for laparoscopy in many locales. This approach is also particularly well-suited for minilaparotomy in developing countries, where it has achieved its greatest popularity. The local technique carries with it reduced morbidity and mortality but may not entirely relieve discomfort. The primary danger of local anesthesia is respiratory depression due to excessive narcosis and sedation. The operator must be alert to the action of the drugs and should always use the minimal effective dose. Although toxicity due to overdosage with local anesthetic drugs is occasionally experienced, allergic reactions to the amide-linkage drugs such as lidocaine or bupivacaine are exceedingly rare. For outpatient laparoscopy or minilaparotomy, local anesthesia with proper preoperative counselling and premedication should provide adequate relief of pain and is the method of choice, unless the patient cannot be examined awake or is totally uncooperative. The decision to utilize either general or local anesthesia should be made by the patient after thorough counselling by the surgical team. In many cases, the circumstances of the surgical environment will dictate the choice, but patient comfort and safety should always be the goal. |
