View this article in RussianSurgical interventions were done in ancient times. Different documents, historical monuments that were found during the diggings, give the information that even ancient surgeons were able to make skull trepanation and lithotomy.
The operating doctors were looking forward to find the way of painless operations performing. That exact desire gave birth to such a great science as anesthesiology.
Its history could be subdivided into two main periods: the first one comprises many centuries beginning with the 5th century B.C. up till the 3rd century B.C. The Ancient Egypt civilization traced the oldest evidence about the attempt to use anesthesia during surgical interventions. Eber’s Papyrus contains information about special means that were given to a patient before an operation to reduce painfulness. They were: mandrake root, belladonna, opium and a dosage of alcohol drink [2].
In 1800 Humphry Davi studied the influence of the exhilarant gas and named it “the laughing gas”. In 1818 English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday had found the confusing influence of diethyl ether. On the 16th of October, 1846 American chemist Charles Thomas Jackson and a dentist William Thomas Green Morth proved that breathing in the ethers’ fumes blacks the consciousness out and leads to the loss of sensitivity in tooth extraction.
As to the great Russian surgeon N.I. Pirogov, we want to mention that medicine is obliged to him with many of his ideas and methods of treatment.
The enormous contribution was made by him due to the topographic anatomy, but his best achievement lies in the sphere of anesthesiology and a resuscitation science. Pirogov was the first who pointed out the disadvantages of narcosis, possible severe side effects and strong necessity of the narcosis symptoms [3].
His treatises include the ideas of many modern methods of endotracheal anesthesia, intravenous, rectal narcosis, and spinal anesthesia.
Thanks to the scientist who made the discoveries in this sphere, all painful examinations and operations are being performed under anesthesia. Nowadays there are a lot of pain-relieving methods, but in this article we want to investigate the particular one, precisely the spinal anesthesia.
Spinal anesthesia is a type of narcosis, which blocks the pain of conducting nerves in particular areas of human body. The main task while performing this type of anesthesia is the injection of the solution of local pain reliever into the spinal area. This space surrounds the spine; it is filled up with colorless transparent liquid, which is called liquor. To get into the right place of subarachnoid cavity one should run through the skin, subcutaneous tissue, the range of intervertebral cords, epidural space [1].
Right position of a patient is very important while performing spinal anesthesia. The patient puts into sitting position or is lying on his side. The most comfortable position for this procedure is sitting one. While having this procedure, one should preserve the stable body position. It will provide more rapid procedure performance.
When the patient has prepared for the procedure completely and is in the comfortable body position, the doctor performs local anesthesia in particular place where the spinal syringe needle should be placed.
The anesthesiologist makes an injection with the spinal needle and slowly puts it through the vertebrae. Having felt the hole, the spinal needle should be stopped immediately. The doctor should take out of it thin metal guidewire which closes the needle’s clearance.
The criteria of the right position for the spinal needle is liquor flowing off its point. After that, the anesthesiologist injects into the spinal cavity little quantity of a local pain reliever’s solution. The spinal needle should be extracted after the end of the procedure.
Having performed the procedure, a patient can experience slight leg pricking and warmth. It is a normal state, one shouldn’t be afraid of it. After that, the pain disappears while experiencing sharp surgical tools touch. At the end of the operation, from 1,5 through 4 hours are needed to experience full stabilization of body perception. As well as all procedures, the spinal anesthesia has its advantages and disadvantages [1].
In our article we are going to list some of them. The ultimate advantages of these procedures are: an adequate analgesia; quick start (only 3-5 minutes are necessary to start a surgical intervention after injection); simple technical performance; absence of systemic toxic effect; profound musculature relaxation;
being in consciousness while under operation; preserving the amount of bleeding volume in operating room. There also are some disadvantages of this procedure. They are: limited time of activity; spinal headache; nausea; allergic response.
Having considered all information given above, we believe that spinal anesthesia is a great discovery made by a human being. Thanks to this type of narcosis, we can perform lots of operations nowadays. For example, such kind of surgical intervention as a caesarean section presupposes the spinal anesthesia as the most proper and safe type on pain relief. It is true because risk of medical influence upon the fetus is completely excluded. The second important fact is that a birthing mother can hear the first cry of her child and can feed it with breast milk. We think that such a great science as anesthesiology will develop rapidly; it is going to achieve the highest point with the doctors doing their best.
*The author wants to thank the supervisor T.G. Dashkina for the help in investigation and preparation of the article.
References
- Prokhorov A.V., Dzyazko A.M., Dzyadzko M.A. Хирургические вмешательства и анестезия [Текст] : монография / 2007. – 288 с
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