Principles of anaesthesia

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The principles of anaesthesia underly everything that you will encounter when considering how to deal with patients before and during operations:

  1. Analgesia - your main aim is to control pain, otherwise operations would be torture.
  2. Sedation - usually, the patient needs to be asleep, and so sedation is rather important for making this a reality.
  3. Muscle Relaxation - in some situations it is important to use muscle relaxants; for example tense rectus muscles do not help abdominal surgery.

Anaesthesia is all about altering the physiology of the body to achieve these things without killing the patient.