The word anesthesia is derived from the Greek words “an” and “aesthesis,” indicating “loss of perception/sensation. Loss of sensation can be localized, i.e., reflected in one part of the body, or generalized, i.e., reflected in the loss of perception and unconsciousness throughout the patient’s body. In the Dictionary, “numbness” means numbness and sensory incompetence; “drunkenness” means confusion or temporary loss of consciousness after drinking alcohol or drugs. Anesthesia, as the name implies, can be understood as numbness, paralysis, referring to the loss of sensation (including pain); drunkenness is drunkenness and unconsciousness, referring to the loss of perception and consciousness. It can also be said that the so-called “numbness” refers to numbness without pain, only the loss of pain sensation, the mechanism is in the peripheral nerve conduction function is blocked, so it is also called conduction anesthesia. To cite the most common example: when the legs crossed after sitting for a long time, the lower leg will feel numb, it is because the nerves in the legs are compressed, resulting in poor blood circulation, ischemia, resulting in nerve conduction function is blocked, so that the remote external pain stimulation can not be “transmitted” to the brain, the brain center can not receive the external stimulation message, naturally, it can not The brain center cannot receive external stimulation messages, so it naturally cannot “transmit” pain sensation. The so-called “intoxication” is caused by the inhibition of cortical function and the deep inhibition of the motor function of brain nerve cells, resulting in the loss of consciousness and perception. For example, when the concentration of alcohol in the blood of the brain increases to a certain level, the first excitement, followed by inhibition, resulting in unconsciousness. Therefore, “anesthesia” does not necessarily mean “drunkenness”, and “drunkenness” does not necessarily mean “anesthesia”. In simple terms, anesthesia is the temporary loss of pain or/and perception. From the medical point of view, anesthesia means the temporary loss of sensation, either overall or locally, through drugs or other methods, in order to achieve pain-free conditions for surgical treatment or other medical examinations and treatments. Anesthesiology is a science that uses basic theories, clinical knowledge and techniques about anesthesia to eliminate patients’ surgical pain, ensure patients’ safety and create good conditions for surgery. Nowadays, anesthesiology has become a specialized and independent discipline in clinical medicine, mainly including clinical anesthesiology, emergency resuscitation medicine, critical care monitoring and treatment, pain diagnosis and treatment, and other related medical research and its mechanism, and is a comprehensive discipline to study anesthesia, analgesia, emergency resuscitation and critical care medicine. Clinical anesthesia is the main part of modern anesthesiology. Anesthesiology is also an emerging discipline, and many new theories, techniques, drugs, and equipment have been applied in anesthesia clinical and research, and there are many new problems, knowledge, and theories to be explored extensively and deeply. Anesthesia is a variety of methods used to eliminate pain, ensure patient safety, and create good surgical conditions when performing surgery or diagnostic examinations. It is also used to control pain, and to perform surgical or diagnostic procedures in which the patient feels pain and needs to be temporarily rendered unconscious by anesthetics or other means. Surgical or diagnostic procedures can also cause mental stress and reflexive adverse reactions. For example, gastrointestinal surgery can cause nausea, vomiting, and prolonged uncomfortable positions (e.g., prone) that can increase patient discomfort and pain, so the patient should be made to undergo the procedure in a comfortable, quiet environment with no reaction to adverse stimuli and temporary loss of memory. Anesthesia is an important cause of anxiety, as is known in psychology. People’s fear of anesthesia stems from their sense of unfamiliarity with it. In other words, the general public lacks understanding of the basic knowledge of anesthesia and the process, and it is difficult to get a glimpse of what anesthesia looks like under the veil of mystery. Many people simply think that anesthesia is “a shot and a sleep”, and anesthesia is regarded as an art of putting people to sleep. As a common man’s simple view, this is easy to understand, but it is not accurate. Anesthesia is much more than that. Behind the “sleep”, there is a high content of modern medical technology. 1. Surgeons treat diseases, anesthesiologists protect lives. This proverb is spot on, the image describes the important role of anesthesiologists in a surgical operation. On the operating table, the surgeon’s “hand work” is only in the lesion to move the knife, the anesthesiologist is more busy. The anesthesiologist is more busy, regulating the depth of anesthesia to keep the patient in a pain-free state, to ensure a smooth operation, and to ensure anesthesia safety. In case of emergency (intraoperative hemorrhage, etc.), they are even busier. Therefore, anesthesiologists are known as “the protectors of life under the shadowless lamp”. It is true that anesthesiologists are good enough. Extensive theoretical knowledge is the foundation, pathophysiology, pharmacology, internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and pediatrics, anesthesia and other basic and clinical medicine and other multidisciplinary content, cross-fertilization and casting an anesthesiologist. When escorting for surgery, it is inevitable to encounter dark rocks and currents. Anesthesiologists must have the ability to handle unexpected situations and manage the vital signs of the patient, including respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, nervous system, liver and kidney function. They must also have meticulous observation skills and be thorough in all aspects. In a word, they are a group of busy but orderly, steady and dedicated doctors. 2.What is anesthesia? The anesthesiologist’s “work in hand” is anesthesia, so what exactly is anesthesia and how does it work? The word anesthesia, as the name implies, means “numb” for numbness and paralysis, and “drunk” for drunkenness. Coma. In short, anesthesia is the use of drugs to make the patient temporarily unconscious, either as a whole or locally, for the purpose of painless surgical treatment. With the advancement of surgery and anesthesiology, anesthesia has become much more than a mere solution for the purpose of surgical pain relief. If we distinguish between types of anesthesia, we can broadly divide them into two categories: general anesthesia and local anesthesia. General anesthesia is often referred to as the “sleeping state”, where the patient is unconscious, the muscles of the body are relaxed, and no pain is experienced. Local anesthesia, as the name implies, is only anesthesia of certain parts of the body. The most common type of local anesthesia is a tooth extraction, where the doctor injects some local anesthetic near the root of your tooth to prevent you from feeling pain. Generally, local anesthesia also includes epidural or subarachnoid anesthesia (commonly known as “lumbar anesthesia”), which is also known as “hemianesthesia”. The anesthesiologist will do something in the middle of your back, and then you will feel the lower half of your body being numbed: you know the scalpel is cutting, but you won’t feel the pain. Nowadays, the proportion of general anesthesia is increasing, and in large hospitals it can account for more than 60%. The process of general anesthesia can be divided into: induction of anesthesia, maintenance of anesthesia, and awakening from anesthesia. To use an analogy, the whole process can be considered as the flight of an airliner. The most dangerous phases of an airplane flight are takeoff and landing, and the same applies to induction and awakening of anesthesia. The so-called induction of anesthesia is to make a person change from awake to asleep, and how is this achieved? In fact, the combined effect of several drugs, like a “combination” of general, you “into” the state of anesthesia; including sedative-hypnotic drugs, opioid analgesics, muscle relaxants, etc.. Due to the lack of consciousness and general muscle relaxation, you have lost the power to breathe, and the anesthesiologist has to insert a tracheal tube into the trachea. Thereafter, an anesthesia machine will continue to provide you with oxygen and anesthetic gas by mechanical force to ensure that you are not deprived of oxygen and that you are under anesthesia. Waking up from anesthesia is the process of “waking up from a dream”. Just as people wake up when they have slept enough, when the anesthetic drugs are metabolized in the body, the anesthetic state cannot be maintained and the person enters the anesthetic awakening stage. When you open your eyes, hear the doctor’s call and regain muscle strength, the tracheal tube will be removed and you will enter the post-anesthesiacare unit (PACU) for at least half an hour to confirm your wakefulness and return to the ward. 3.Only minor surgery, no minor anesthesia. Anesthesia is amazing, right? However, in the current medical environment, anesthesiologists and the anesthesia work they do are not highly valued. Very often, what people think about is only the difficulty and success of the surgery, but rarely think about the hero behind the scenes to ensure the success of the surgery – anesthesia. In fact, anesthesiologists and surgeons are like twin brothers who are difficult to separate; the purpose of anesthesia is to ensure that the operation is carried out, and the prerequisite for a smooth operation is successful anesthesia. Compared to surgery, anesthesia is a “life-saving” procedure. In some cases, anesthesia is even more important than the surgery itself. Every day on the operating table, patients “go under the knife” for the same disease, but may face completely different anesthesia treatment. In the same case of appendicitis, the surgeon’s approach is almost identical, but the patient’s systemic condition may be completely different, and the anesthesia and management will be vastly different. When a diabetic, coronary elderly man in his 90s walks onto the operating table with acute appendicitis, the risks and pressures faced by the anesthesiologist are unprecedented. Compared to anesthetizing a 20-year-old, the intraoperative changes in the elderly may be extremely volatile due to systemic decompensation and increased disease. This also confirms the words of anesthesiologists – only minor surgery, no minor anesthesia. This phrase is also a constant reminder to anesthesiologists: do a good job of anesthesia, so that patients can “wake up between dreams, relaxed”. In the days when there was no anesthesia, you wanted to do surgery without being anesthetized? The ancients did it. The ancient Egyptians performed amputations and orchiectomies while awake. When this was not possible, the patient was tied up, held down and operated on, completely ignoring the painful howls. Later, it was discovered that in the unconscious or comatose state, people are not very sensitive to pain. Circumcision was also performed in the ancient West Asian country of Asilia by compressing the blood vessels in the neck to cause unconsciousness in the patient. Later, bloodletting to make people unconscious, beating them unconscious with wooden sticks, or intoxicating them with white wine became the methods of preparation before the operation. According to “Three Kingdoms? Hua Tuo invented “Ma Bo San”, which was used to anesthetize patients for abdominal surgery. In 652 and 1596 A.D., Sun Simiao and Li Shizhen introduced the anesthetic effect of mandrake flowers in the “Prepared Emergency Thousand Jin Medicine Formula” and “Compendium of Materia Medica”, respectively, and in 1743, Zhao Xuemin introduced an open-incision remedy in his book “Cascade of Yazhi”, which consisted of Cao Wu, Chuan Wu and Tian Nan Xing.