Alex Lenkei, a 61-year-old hypnotist, opted against using any traditional anesthetic for his recent surgery, choosing instead to send himself into a hypnotic trance for the duration of the surgery.

He was able to hear the cracking of his bones and the surgeon asking for a saw -- he could even hear the surgeon "hammering away at the bone" with a hammer and chisel. He could feel the doctor "pulling and manipulating" him, but felt no pain.

Much of the medical community is quite interested in this, as studies have shown that using less anesthetic can reduce the time patients spend in the hospital and speed healing. Additionally, many patients are nervous about using an anesthetic, and while they might not opt for using hypnosis only, it might help to calm them and allow a lower dose of anesthetic to be used.

Source

The recent release of the new movie Awake, which tells the story of a guy experiencing "anesthesia awareness" (or waking up during surgery), has prompted some renewed attention to an issue that has existed since surgery and anesthetics were invented. The number of people that actually do experience some kind of consciousness during surgery is only about 0.1%, or about 21,000 people, in any given year. But that's still a lot of people, and thankfully it seems anesthesiologists are dedicated to getting that number as low as possible. But putting people "under" is an art really, because it's not something that can be measured specifically and the line between too little anesthetic and too much is a very narrow one.

Have you, or someone you know, every woken up in the middle of an operation? Scary!

Source

The words surgery and fire generally do not belong in the same sentence, but with surgical fires still happening in pretty decent numbers, the American Society of Anesthesiologists wants to form a battle plan to prevent them from happening in the first place.

In many cases, oxygen used in operating rooms can be sparked by tools and other objects, creating an immediate fire hazard in a place where patients need acute care rather than exposure to possible fires.

It's amazing that the number of fires related to actual surgical procedures are not required to be reported or tracked (yet), but all that may change this fall. Yes, they are rare, but the one time it happens can be life-threatening. Isn't that enough for change?

Source