Medicine is a good idea # 18 Amnesia in medicine! Can bad memories be erased?

There are moments that we would like to forget about as soon as possible. Accident, pain, operating room all this is a huge stress for us and it can come back with redoubled power in the future. Therefore, today for anaesthesiologists, just as it is important to adequately relieve pain during surgery, it is also important to ensure that the patient will not often remember the unpleasant sensations coming from the operating room.

But how? After all, isn't the patient sleeping during surgery?

Well, not necessarily, there are many treatments and operations that are carried out while the patient is conscious, and sometimes even contact with him is necessary for the operation to be successful. For example, neurosurgical operations. Some patients are also anaesthetized, not in general, but have spinal anesthesia and during the operation such a person, although he does not feel pain, remains completely conscious.

Is the fear after surgery frequent?

Yes! Sometimes even "routine" and relatively safe treatments can cause patient's fear and reluctance to participate in them in the future. For example, cardioversion consisting of applying electrodes to the patient's chest and triggering a discharge synchronized with the heart action. The procedure itself is confusingly similar to defibrillation and can cause fear, and unfortunately it must often be repeated several times to the same patient at intervals.

Although in emergency situations, the psychological comfort of the patient seems to be a less significant component of the treatment, it often has a huge impact on future recovery.

One of the examples when fear makes or hinders the treatment and functioning of patients is the fear of a cardioverter-defibrillator discharge. In some patients who have an implanted cardioverter-defibrillator there is a life-saving defibrillation. Such a procedure, although it is a great achievement of the technique and saves the patient's life, also causes severe pain, which sometimes leads to the formation of anxiety syndrome before the next possible discharge of the stimulator. Unfortunately, there is a large group of patients who want to give up treatment or take strong anxiolytics and antidepressants because of fear of another shock.

Sometimes, the loss of consciousness and subsequent amnesia is something desirable for both patients, saving them trauma and doctors, who are much easier to treat patients who are rationally approaching treatment.

How to make the patient not remember the surgery?

There are drugs that will cope with this undertaking :) What is most interesting, some of them have the ability to induce short oblivion, thanks to which the patient may forget the traumatic circumstances that occurred before the drug was administered.
A substance that has a component that causes amnesia are:

• Midazolam
• Propofol
• Ketamine
• Sevoflurane

Of course, their use applies to the time of administration the drug and near past and future. Then, if you have survived a trauma in the past, instead of Midazolam, a psychotherapist's visit will be much more effective :)

Therefore, if you wake up after surgery not remembering the last hours remember that this is probably the result of correct treatment, not a side effect.

I hope it is an interesting topic for you :) Nice to come back to steemit after a short break.

Pictures taken from Pixabay