Q. What is an anesthesia? Why is it important?
A. Ordinary people have a rough idea of anesthesia as a medical procedure which simply makes the patient feel no pain, but above all, the most important role of anesthesia is to keep the life safe, which is the main duty of the anesthetist during operation. Anesthetists take care of the patient during the procedure by helping him or her breathe and discharge urine without problems, making the patient’s heart beat at a normal interval, and keeping the body at a normal temperature, etc.
Q. What are the types of anesthesia?
A. In general, they are partial or local anesthesia, conscious sedation, and general anesthesia.
- Partial or local anesthesia
Used in most plastic surgeries (i.e. eye surgery), the partial or local anesthesia is very simple and convenient procedure by injecting anesthetics into the nerves which control the body parts. It maintains the anesthetic effects for a certain period of time and is used for liposuction as well.
- Conscious sedation
By injecting a proper dose of hypnotics or sedatives into the blood vessels, conscious sedation procedure controls, at the minimum level, the consciousness of a patient who can thus breathe a constant breath by himself or herself and react on the surgeon’s question or a light stimulation. The patient can get back to the normal life right away after the surgery. It is frequently used for nose surgery which is very painful with a partial anesthesia.
- General anesthesia
General anesthesia is the procedure by which anesthetics are inserted into the respiratory organs (airway) of the patient under the sleeping state for the complete relaxation of the muscles. It is used for face contouring or liposuction surgery for which partial anesthesia or conscious sedation is unavailable |
Q. It is said that a general anesthesia is dangerous, is it true?
A. Full and thorough examination (blood test, liver function test, lung X-ray, electrocardiogram, urine test, etc.) gives you an assurance of safety. Besides, BK is using the high-priced ‘Isoflurane (Forane)’ which is regarded as the safest and latest medication ever developed. (Only 0.2% of administered medication is metabolized in the body and this is equivalent to 1/100 of ‘Halothane’ which is the existing and cheap medication in use. The less medication is administered and metabolized, the less toxicity remains in the liver.) National Health Insurance Corporation approves this medication only for specific cases such as brain disease, heart disease, kidney disease, liver malfunction and organ transplant. Being a high-priced, this medication is not available in most clinics or for common surgeries. However, it is in use in our clinic for all the patients. And highly skilled full-time anesthetists (30 years of practice) are present in the clinic, so don’t worry about the safety.
Q. Is it painful when I come out of the anesthesia?
A. Of course, it is painful. To solve this problem, a pain killer by intravenous or intramuscular injection was used in the past, which caused various side-effects such as high level of medication in the blood first, and later below the desired level of medication for the pain control. Recently, a smart device has been invented. This manages a certain fixed amount of medication at a regular and steady speed. It’s known as the most effective pain-killer. Patients don’t need to worry about the post-surgery pain.
Q. Is a partial (local) anesthesia painful, too?
A. A partial anesthesia to the soft skin tissue like eyes is hardly painful, but to the hard skin tissue like nose can be seriously painful (especially in revision surgery). So, we perform a conscious sedation procedure to all the patients for painless operation. As a matter of course, full-time anesthetists make it possible.
Q. Do I have to avoid the surgery in summer?
In the past, there were no good disinfectants or antibiotics with poor air-conditioning system. But, these days, we are free from such seasonal restraints. However, it is true that there are some advantages of surgery in winter like covering up the surgical part with a cap or mask.
Q. Does the anesthesia cause after-effects or loss of memory?
A. When I worked at a university hospital, a patient who burned himself all over due to a bus fire underwent 26 times of anesthesia in the 3 years for the skin graft and other surgeries. However, he was normal in any tests like brain wave test and an IQ test. Please be assured since there are no after-effects of anesthesia.
Q. Is it true that nail polish or any other type of nail pigmentation can obstruct the anesthesia?
A. One of the ways to monitor the condition of the patient under anesthesia is to use a sensor at the fingertips for the level of oxygen in the blood. At this time, nail polish or any other pigmentation on the fingernails can mislead the patient’s condition as lower level of oxygen than actual. However, in this case, we have an alternative, toenails.
Q. Why is a fasting necessary?
A. Anesthesia performed before food is completely digested can cause nausea once in a while. The vomit can arouse pneumonia due to gastric acid and food into the lungs. Fasting is necessary for the prevention of this emergency case.
Q. Why do I need to get the check-ups before the anesthesia? And which ones?
A. General anesthetics are absorbed into the lungs by inhalation and transferred to the brain through blood. Parts of them are counteracted in the liver and excreted from the body through kidneys. If there is dysfunction in any of these organs, recovery from anesthesia would be delayed or so. Therefore, it is necessary to have medical check-up such as blood test, ECG (electrocardiogram) test, chest X-ray, urine test, etc.
Q. What should I do if I regained my consciousness under anesthesia?
A. Anesthesia means that inhalant anesthetics intubating the airway are absorbed into the lungs and transferred to the brain through blood, in order to forget the pain. To bring the patient to his or her senses, only pure oxygen is intubated and inhaled general anesthetics should be removed in reverse order. That is, the patient cannot regain his or her consciousness until the anesthetist wake him or her up. The fact that a person is put to sleep by just one injection is a matter of common occurrence, but in fact, the truth is that the person cannot remember what has happened afterwards.
Q. Why do I have a sore throat after I come out of the anesthesia?
A. As previously explained, a thin tube is inserted into an airway for the inhalation of anesthetics and oxygen. In this procedure, indelicate or unskillful performance can hurt the throat, but highly- skilled anesthetists in our clinic perform with careful attention.
Q. Is it true that I can have food only after letting gas out because of anesthesia?
A. In case of general surgeries which involve internal organs such as appendectomy, gastrectomy, Caesarean section, etc., the movement of internal organs is weakened, so it is strictly forbidden to eat. Yet, since plastic surgery doesn’t involve internal organs, the patient can eat the food as soon as coming out of the anesthesia. Only when the patient needs to lie down in the bed, liquid food which is less stressful to the stomach is preferred.
Q. Why should I take my bra off?
A. When we are sleeping or conscious, we twist and turn the body, so it doesn’t cause any trouble, but for a long operation under anesthesia, the skin can be squeezed on any kind of knots, thin wires (in case of bra), seam lines or stitches on the clothes, which causes a bad circulation of the blood and thus damage to the skin tissue. So, this is for the prevention against any damage.
Q. Why should parents or guardians keep off the operation room?
A. Operation rooms need to be extremely clean. Any trivial mistakes like contaminating sterilized surgical instruments or patient’s body part to be operated can cause a serious infection that the patient will suffer from. In addition, we have seen a guardian who fainted at the sight of the operation.
Q. Is a long hours of operation at a time harmful to the body?
A. We have many experiences of time-consuming operations such as finger suture of a worker or butcher who comes to the clinic with their fingers cut off accidentally. Surgery time depends on each case, but generally, it takes about 4 to 6 hours to suture a finger. Accordingly 4 or 5 fingers take 24 hours. We have known up to 27 hours of anesthesia and no problem had occurred. Besides, a concept of ‘balanced anesthesia’ which has been recently introduced enables to prevent from any possible adverse effects on the organs by using anesthetics that can act on the right body part and have suitable effects for each function.
Q. Can I have a surgery on my period?
A. Woman’s body is very delicate and mysterious. More bleeding may happen at the period of menstruation than usual. It is preferable to avoid the menstruation if possible. It doesn’t matter just before it commences or after it ends. However, when you inevitably fall off the roof and get the curse the day of operation, please let us know for the due treatments.
Q. Is anesthesia related to drinking?
A. In principle, the patient should keep away from drinking before surgery. Medicines administered during the operation such as anesthetics or pain killers or antibiotics are mostly counteracted in the liver. Thus it needs to avoid overworking the liver before surgery. |
People have various feelings which are physically sensed and one of them is ‘pain’. A pain is a feeling of great discomfort caused by the stimulation that a living creature can have when it is attacked by any harmful factors like germs invading and growing in the body, or when it has physical defects and damage or injury resulting in functional disorder. 
According to the regulations, all the major hospitals should be equipped with their own power plant in operation rooms and ICU in case of power outage. However, private clinics actually cannot even conceive of an independent generating facility, it requires a huge investment and attentive management. Nevertheless, BK Plastic Surgery Clinic has been equipped with an independent power plant system since 1997, which is the first system ever in the private practice, and keeps patients safe from any possible power outage. 
