General anesthesia or narcosis consists in temporarily turning off the central zones of pain sensitivity and the transmission of pain impulses in the brain or spinal cord.

Anesthesia can be intravenous or intubation.

With intravenous anesthesia in the patient’s vein a drug is administered that causes the pain sensitivity centers of the brain to be turned off and at the same time turns off the patient’s consciousness, maintaining, as a rule, independent breathing. Often, this method of anesthesia is used for dental procedures such as wisdom tooth extraction or implantation.

Intubation anesthesia consists in the preliminary temporary exclusion at the level of the brain of the patient’s central pain sensitivity and consciousness, temporary paralysis of the muscles followed by intubation (introduction of a breathing tube into the trachea) and implementation of artificial lung ventilation (artificial respiration) using a special breathing apparatus. This type of anesthesia is used in major operations, where it is necessary that the patient’s muscles are relaxed and involuntary or voluntary movements do not interfere with the surgeon and are completely excluded.

After intravenous and intubation anesthesia, patients feel as if after a good and deep sleep, sometimes they remember bizarre dreams, occasionally experience a headache, note nausea, in rare cases vomiting. After intubation anesthesia, there is itching and a feeling of discomfort in the throat, which is associated with being there during the operation of the breathing tube. In the first hours after the operation, all patients are under the close supervision of the medical staff of the anesthesia service (anesthesiologist, nurse anesthetist). Only when the patient fully regains consciousness is he transferred to a regular ward.