How To Prepare For Oral Surgery
If you are going to have oral surgery, it is perfectly normal for a series of pre-tests
and procedures to occur, to ensure that your surgery will go as smoothly as possible. This article will discuss the different tests which may be ordered before going under, and exactly what going under will be like for you.
The practice of ordering routine laboratory tests before admission for surgery is commonplace in most hospitals. Many doctors believe that urinalysis, chest x-rays, or complete blood counts, for example, can identify potential problems that might complicate the surgery if not detected and treated early.
Some tests commonly performed before surgery and the symptoms that prompt doctors to order them are a chest x-ray, an electrocardiogram, a urinalysis, a white blood count check, a platelet count check, glucose testing, potassium testing, and sodium testing. These are completely normal, and should not be feared at all.
When it is time to go under, you will learn that anesthesia is the art and science of relieving pain and keeping patients safe and stable during surgery. For patients who are already nervous about their impending surgery, the idea of being unconscious may not be a comforting thought, especially if it's coupled with the fear of not regaining consciousness.
Although many people associate anesthesia with regular sleeping, slumber is only a side effect. If you were to go to sleep and surgery began, you'd wake up in a hurry.
While sleep involves a dousing of the highest brain recognition centers derived from the senses, it would take only a mild stimulus to peak them to alarm. The unconsciousness or "deep sleep" required for surgery is another matter.
Problems traditionally associated with anesthesia such as drug hangover, nausea, and awareness have been lessened over the years by better drugs, improved monitoring, and specialized training. Although it is rare, some patients have reported "awareness" or experiencing sensations while under anesthesia.
Those patients say they recall hearing snatches of conversations, being aware of movement, and feeling pain. But whether this awareness really occurs or is just the subconscious mind playing tricks that come back to haunt the conscious mind has been subject to a lot of debate in the medical community.
But whether or not awareness is real, anesthesiologists are always on the lookout for indications of "light" anesthesia, such as sweating or involuntary twitching. In these cases, an interdisciplinary scientist with FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the anesthesiologist would increase the anesthesia to put the patient in a deeper state of unconsciousness.
According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 2 million people a year contract infections during a hospital stay, and nearly 90,000 die as the result. Urinary tract infections, surgical wound infections, pneumonia, and bloodstream infections annually are the most common hospital-acquired infections.
Of those, pneumonia and bloodstream infections cause the most deaths (about 34,000 and 25,000 respectively; infections from surgical wounds cause about 11,000 deaths, and urinary tract infections 9,000). Those numbers would be far greater without infection-control programs that have been required for hospital accreditation since 1976.
Hand washing is the single most important procedure for preventing hospital-acquired infections. Patients and their families should ask their health-care workers to follow good hand washing practices, and bring it to their attention when they do not.
In addition, health-care professionals need to follow guidelines and recommendations on the use of intravenous lines and other medical devices, and the proper use and administration of antibiotics. Patients should alert their physicians or nurses who are providing them care, or hospital administrators, if they have concerns about their health-care workers' practices.
All states have licensing and oversight bodies in their state health departments that respond to concerns and complaints brought by patients. If you become more ill after arriving home from a hospital stay and develop unexpected symptoms such as pain, chills, fever, discharge, or increased inflammation of a surgical wound, you should alert your doctor.
As you can see, there is much to research, consider, and prepare, when it comes to having major oral surgery. Being as prepared as can possibly be will help to keep you calm and relaxed when your surgery day arrives.
by: Ignacio Lopez
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