Anaesthesia

IDr. Sue Gardner, Anaesthetist use twilight sedation and local anaesthesia for all my surgeries. For body surgery, the sedation is administered usually by one of the two women anaesthesiologists who have worked with me for many years. Both these anaesthesiologists are highly experienced and both have been under my knife so they know what it is like to be at your end.

We use Dormicum, a Valium-like sedative, as a premed to make you feel calm, relaxed and sleepy prior to surgery. The twilight is administered through a small IV drip in your hand. The drugs given vary, but in general include the following 3 in various combinations:

  • Dormicum: the sedative which will both calm you and make you feel sleepy
  • An opiate: a morphine-like drug for pain, usually shorter acting and with much less of a nauseating effect than morphine
  • Propofol (Diprivan): an anaesthetic agent which will make you sleep

We prefer twilight sedation over general anaesthesia as it allows a much quicker and smoother recovery without a hangover effect. We do not paralyse you and therefore you breathe on your own without a tube down your throat and there is no need for gases. You cannot become "locked in" where you feel pain and are not be able to let us know. When my anaesthesiologists or staff have elected to have me operate on them, they have all chosen twilight over general anaesthesia.

For body surgery such as liposuction and tummy tuck we advocate the use of a spinal injection through a small prick in the back. While to some extent it is similar to an epidural used during labour, it is miles apart in terms of discomfort and pain. After all, you do not have a great big belly in front of you which makes it that much harder to do at the end of pregnancy. The spinal anaesthetic will numb you completely from the waist down for about 4 hours after which feeling and movement will return.

The face is relatively easy to numb using local anaesthesia and requires a few simple nerve blocks. Most facial surgery is therefore performed under fairly light sedation, which is made a little heavier around the time that I give the