Anaesthetics

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  • Created by: Megan
  • Created on: 14-06-13 15:00

Advantages and disadvantages of anaesthetics

Advantages

  • Anaesthetics significantly reduced the pain of patients during surgery
  • They allowed surgeons to operate deeper into the body, trying more complicated procedures
  • Surgeons could take longer on operations before, since the patient wasn't in agony
  • People became more confident in surgery, particularly after endorsement from Queen Victoria

Disadvantages

  • They dosage of anaesthetics was unknown and it took time to research safe amounts of each substance
  • Anaesthetics created the 'Black Period' of surgery from 1850-70, so the number of deaths actually rose at first
  • Side effects were unknown and often dangerous
  • Nitrous oxide did not affect everyone
  • Ether was highly flammable, caused coughing, sickness, irritation to the lungs had was difficult to transport
  • Chloroform caused some patients to die of heart problems
  • There was opposition, particularly from religious people

Evaluation

The first breakthrough in solving the problem of pain was mainly a success. Despite some side effects and limited knowledge of each chemical, operations did become much less painful and safer, on the whole.

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