can you snore under anesthesia?
Question by : can you snore under anesthesia?
i’m getting surgery for my eyelids in august and i do have….a snoring issue. agh… embarassing >_< the doctor told me i'm going to be put under an anesthesia where i'm unconscious but not really because the nurse is going to wake me up every now and then to open and close my eyes during the procedure. can i snore during the surgery? or no... also, what is general and what is local?
Best answer:
Answer by Chris Mihaljevich
The answer is YES, you can snore under anesthesia.
If we put in a breathing tube or an LMA, you won’t. (Those bypass the upper airway where snoring happens) If we use a mask on your face, you probably will. We have airway adjuvants to help alleviate upper airway obstruction (which is what snoring is):
We put these in noses:
http://www.buyemp.com/tmp_image.php?item…
and these in mouths:
http://www.buyemp.com/tmp_image.php?item…
to hold the soft tissue off the back of the throat.
In fact, you are more likely to snore under anesthesia than you are when you’re just sleeping, because our drugs usually make your muscles weak, even if we don’t paralyze you.
Chris’s answer is good.
If they are going to wake you up, you won’t have general, which is the totally knocked out anesthesia. We sometimes do general with wake-ups, for back or brain surgery usually, but for eyelids, you’ll just be deeply sedated, and the surgeon will inject local anesthetic (numbing medicine) where he/she is working.
As for snoring, that is airway obstruction, and you may have obstructive sleep apnea. If you are tired in the mornings, get yourself checked for it; it requires a sleep study. If your airway obstruction occurs with the sedation (and it’s highly likely that it will), then you will be less deeply sedated. You also may notice someone lifting your chin if you start to snore during the surgery.
If your concern is, snoring during the surgery and may feel embarrass, then no worries. In medical field, we view all this as physiology. Even when we see genital areas, it’s just anatomy before us. Not as what normal people sees it as.
During PAP smear, we can’t be bothered about genitalia etc but concern if the cervix is normal, healthy or any pathology there. It’s as common as you reading newspaper.
Even if you were to snore, then it may be a ggood thing! Snoring meanings something wrong with air entry at the back of the throat. And we can alert you and you get treatment for it! Rather than those horror stories happening eg people dying in their sleep!
Hope i can help to put your mind at ease. Body, any “malfuction”, we see it from the point of anatomy, physiology and pathology.