In the operating room, you lie at a loss, standing next to a man in green, one hand covering your nose and mouth with a mask, one hand pushing a syringe, asking you to count from one to ten. “One, two, three, four, five ……” The sound of the word “six” has not yet come out clearly, your tongue and vocal cords are as frozen as if they were frozen, and your head is white as the nurse’s and doctor’s voices are gradually withdrawn from you. Suddenly, another voice poured in, calling your name loudly, “Wake up, the operation is over.” You’ve only been asleep for a split second and the surgery is over? You plan to ask what’s going on, but your tongue won’t straighten out like a knot, and all that comes out of your mouth is a gurgling sound. You realized that you couldn’t speak and your mind was confused. Did anesthesia make you stupid? Anesthesia’s Past and Present In George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, Sir Patrick says something like this: In my early days, you got the patient drunk, got someone to hold him down; then held your breath and did the operation quickly. Nowadays, you can operate at a leisurely pace, and the patient doesn’t start to feel pain until after you’ve collected the check and left. Cory. Chloroform has gotten into so many mischiefs, it’s made it possible for every schmuck to become a surgeon. In the 1840s, ether was used for surgical anesthesia, ushering in a new era of modern medicine. This was followed by the aforementioned chloroform and nitrous oxide (laughing gas). After more than 30 years of practice, it was found that these gases not only anesthetized the patient, but also stunned the surgeon. The development of devices for inhalation anesthesia began to be developed, and the development of devices, in turn, promoted the study of anesthesiology, tracheal intubation, balloon ventilation, intravenous anesthesia, and muscle relaxants have been introduced. Anesthesia techniques became more and more sophisticated, and there was a need for professionally trained people to do the job. Thus, the anesthesiologist was born. Not all anesthesia is created equalAnesthesia can be divided into general anesthesia and local anesthesia. Local anesthesia is used for minor surgical procedures in dentistry, ophthalmology, gynecology, and surgery, where a person loses sensation in a part of the body without losing consciousness. The principle of local anesthesia is now well understood. Anesthetics work on local nerves, which in short means that the path of pain sensation from a certain part of your body to the brain is blocked, so the brain does not feel the pain. However, the human body has hundreds of millions of nerve pathways, if you want to do open chest, open abdomen, such a major surgery, how many roads to be blocked in order to play the effect of anesthesia? With general anesthesia all the pathways lead to one place – the brain – and as long as the anesthetic is allowed to act here, general anesthesia can be achieved. The gradual transition from inhalational anesthetics to intravenous anesthetics has resulted in the continuous experimentation of pioneers in the use of each type of anesthetic. The structure and function of the brain is extraordinarily complex, and we have so far been unable to know what mechanism is involved in the reaction between anesthetic drugs and the brain. It has been suggested that the drug acts by binding to certain protein receptors in the brain, but exactly which type of receptor does it bind to? Do different anesthetics have the same mechanism of action? What are the effects on the nervous system other than anesthesia? These questions have not yet been answered. Anesthesia carries risks, so be careful when being anesthetized. Like any drug, general anesthetics also carry certain risks. When a patient wakes up after surgery, he or she often feels some mild discomfort, such as sore throat, headache, hoarse voice, muscle pain and fatigue, which will disappear after a few days of rest. However, after experiencing the anesthesia process of chaotic thinking this state, people are concerned about the anesthesia will cause damage to the intelligence? It is not an empty claim that you become stupid after a general anesthesia procedure. Resourceful doctors have found that some elderly people undergo major surgery, learning ability, memory and attention will experience a certain degree of decline in the short term, after a few days can return to normal, while a very small number of people months or even permanent can not be recovered. This temporary decline in cognitive ability after surgery is called Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). 1998, a large study by the International Association for the Study of Postoperative Cognitive Disorders (IASPOCD) found that the age of the patient, the duration of the anesthesia, the surgical complications, and the postoperative infections were all possibly related to POCD. Some anesthesiologists were not satisfied with this finding and immediately did a randomized controlled trial to deny the causal relationship between anesthesia and postoperative cognitive impairment. Subsequently, studies in this area have been conducted in many countries with mixed conclusions. The current mainstream view is that the ‘culprit’ of POCD is a neuroinflammatory response caused by multiple factors, including anesthesia. It seems that anesthesia can’t escape the blame, but at most it plays the role of “accessory”, and the crime is not taboo. General anesthesia is not contraindicated for young and old, but POCD is more common in the elderly who undergo major surgery, but is it safe for young people and children? Talking about harm in isolation from dose is a fool’s errand. Large doses of anesthetics will indeed cause a devastating blow to the nervous system, but after more than a hundred years of exploration, people have basically determined the safe dose of existing anesthesia drugs. In recent decades, numerous animal experiments have shown that general anesthetics do not impair learning ability or memory. The Mayo Clinic, one of the top-ranked clinics in the United States, conducted a follow-up survey of 8,548 children born in the area and found that early exposure to anesthetics may have some effect on future learning ability, but not so serious that more educational resources need to be invested to correct the problem. The Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital affiliated with Fudan University has tested the cognitive function of 100 children aged 4 – 7 years who underwent general anesthesia surgery, and the results showed that general anesthesia did not cause any significant damage to the children’s cognitive function. There are many studies on the adverse effects of anesthesia, but there is little direct evidence that anesthesia impairs cognitive performance in young people and children. Based on the principle of telling the facts and presenting the data, the academic community believes that anesthesia still has a safe level of impact on intelligence. To summarize anesthesia is indispensable in modern medicine as the ‘left guardian’ of surgery. Even though there is some controversy surrounding its side effects, for the vast majority of people, anesthesia will not make you stupid. Also, as a friendly reminder, as the saying goes, “there is no such thing as minor surgery without minor anesthesia,” and any anesthesia comes with unpredictable risks. However, with an anesthesiologist on your side, feel free to sleep easy.