Hello and welcome

Good morning all,

My name is Ben and I am an anesthesiologist living and working in the Chicago area. My job, by nature, is enshrouded in mystery. Like all doctors, I have done many year of training and have steadfastly dedicated myself to practicing medicine in the best way I know how. Unlike other doctors, though, my patients have to take me at my word when I tell them that, because they're sleeping while I am taking care of them.

So what is it that I (and 46,000 other anesthesiologists nationwide, not to mention thousands of CRNAs) do while you the patient are sleeping? Millions of surgeries, and thus millions of anesthetics, are done in the United States each year, and the overwhelming majority of them do just fine. General anesthesia is truly one of the most amazing advances in modern medicine, allowing for painless surgery and the endless array of invasive procedures that doctors are now capable of performing. Once quite dangerous for even the healthy patients, time and technology have sharpened and refined it considerably to the point that general anesthesia, even on the sickest patients, is a very safe endeavor.

In some ways, though, anesthesia, like all of modern medicine, has become a victim of its own success, so to speak. Their record of safety, especially recently, has become so good that the general public takes for granted how fascinatingly complex - and dangerous - even the most "routine" anesthetic can be. Two years ago, when Michael Jackson died as a result of the misuse of the common anesthetic drug propofol, this danger raised its ugly head, and with tragic consequences. The buzz of publicity that followed was particularly revealing to me in that it showed how little people really understood about anesthesia and what I do for a living. Two years later, I encounter that misunderstanding every day, in every place - comments I hear from patients, sound bites on TV and radio.

Even many of the surgeons I work with don't know a lot about what I'm doing back there on the other side of the surgical drapes. As long as the patient is safe, immobile during surgery, and wakes up at the end, that's all that matters to them. That's no knock on the surgeons; their focus is on their operation, and conversely, I don't pretend to know how to perform any of the operations I am privileged to participate in on a daily basis. If they are focused too much on me, they can't perform their best operation, and it isn't good for anybody.

The biggest reason I have started this blog is to help demystify exactly what goes on when the patient is asleep during surgery. I won't give a step-by-step guide on how to give anesthesia; it takes years of study and training to accomplish that. What I can do is provide an insider's perspective on the complex process that is anesthesiology. Even the simplest general anesthetic involves bringing a patient perilously close to death, controlling all aspects of their physiology while they sleep, all the while maintaining their immobility, minimizing their discomfort, and ensuring their amnesia of the operation. It is a task I, and thousands of other anesthesia providers like me, take seriously. Over the course of this blog, I hope to shed some light on how and why we do things, and in doing so, I can hopefully unmask some of the mystery - and allay most of the fears - that patients feel before undergoing anesthesia.