The dangers of general anesthesia for one-year-old babies

General anesthesia is necessary for surgery as a preparation before the operation. After complete anesthesia, the patient's body is numb from head to toe and will not feel pain. He or she can spend the time easily on the operating table. However, we need to pay attention to the fact that one-year-old babies cannot undergo general anesthesia, as this will have a great impact on the child's future physical development.

What is general anesthesia

General anesthesia is the abbreviation of general anesthesia, which means that the anesthetic is inhaled through the respiratory tract, or injected into the body through the vein or muscle, which makes the patient's pain disappear, muscles relax, and reflex activity weakened. This inhibitory state is controllable and reversible. During the operation, the anesthesiologist must adjust the dosage of anesthetics according to the patient's condition and monitoring of various vital signs. At the end of the operation, the anesthetics will gradually be metabolized and disappear, and the child will slowly wake up.

Within one week after general anesthesia, children may experience varying degrees of insomnia and short-term memory impairment. Therefore, some parents attribute these changes in their children after surgery to the decline in intelligence caused by anesthesia. In fact, surgery for children is a traumatic process and recovery takes a certain amount of time. This does not mean that the child’s intellectual development has been affected. Every year in our country, thousands of children receive general anesthesia for surgical treatment. Some have even experienced it multiple times, but there is no data showing that general anesthesia will have an adverse effect on the intelligence of children. Besides, intelligence cannot be measured precisely like height or weight. Even the most comprehensive intelligence tests have limitations. Therefore, parents should not attribute the general anesthesia performed during surgery to their children’s unsatisfactory performance in a certain intelligence test or exam. As long as it is a regular hospital with good medical and technical conditions, the safety of the child's anesthesia and surgery can be guaranteed. In order for children to go through the operation comfortably and safely, parents should put aside concerns that anesthesia may make people stupid and boldly choose general anesthesia.

1. After waking up, the child will cry and be irritable for a short time, but will soon calm down;

2. Children should be carefully cared for to prevent them from tearing off bandages and gauze due to crying;

3. Pediatric patients can drink clear beverages (water, juice) 2 hours after surgery, and can drink breast milk or formula milk 4 hours after surgery.

In short, anesthesia is an important part of modern medicine, and most surgeries cannot be performed without anesthesia. Generally speaking, anesthesia is very safe and general anesthesia will not affect the intellectual development of children.

Parents should have a correct understanding of this and cooperate with doctors to successfully perform surgical treatment for their children.