I have a question if any of the members are doctors or surgeons....

[Chuck Wintle]

My son has had a close call with death as his heart stopped during routine surgery for appendicitis. Can this operation be done with a local anaesthetic to a void the general anaesthetic? Moderators: Please delete if this post is inappropriate. thanks.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

My son has had a close call with death as his heart stopped during routine surgery for appendicitis. Can this operation be done with a local anaesthetic to a void the general anaesthetic? Moderators: Please delete if this post is inappropriate. thanks.

Your son should ask his doctor. If he is concerned about whether the advice he is getting is reliable, he should seek a second opinion. Doctors are generally reluctant to give advice over the internet regarding patients they have not been able to examine. There are a lot of good reasons for that.

[Steve Demuth]

My son has had a close call with death as his heart stopped during routine surgery for appendicitis. Can this operation be done with a local anaesthetic to a void the general anaesthetic? Moderators: Please delete if this post is inappropriate. thanks.

I'm not a doctor. I do, because of my work, know a lot of surgeons and physicians, however.

The short answer is yes, abdominal surgery can be done under local anesthetic. My wife delivered our first child via Caesarian under a spinal local, fully alert and awake, e.g. Most appendectomies nowadays are done laparoscopically, however, and the surgeons I know have typically wanted laparoscopic surgeries to be done under general anesthesia, because the air introduced into the peritoneum to enable visualization and control in the abdomen causes breathing challenges leading to a strong preference that the patient be on artificial respiration. There is a fair bit of experimentation with laparoscopic surgery under local/regional anesthetic in the recent literature, however.

[Eduard Nemirovsky]

Sorry to hear what happen to your son, but woodworking forum not the best place for these type of questions.
Spinal anesthesia is not considering local, even we use local anesthetics for spinal injection.
Internet is not you best source of information for this matter. Please talk to your anesthesiologist before procedure. You can just call main phone number for the hospital and ask connect to anesthesiologist on call, who will gladly be answer all you questions.
If you have any concerns about future surgery, talk to your surgeon.

I'm not a doctor. I do, because of my work, know a lot of surgeons and physicians, however.

The short answer is yes, abdominal surgery can be done under local anesthetic. My wife delivered our first child via Caesarian under a spinal local, fully alert and awake, e.g. Most appendectomies nowadays are done laparoscopically, however, and the surgeons I know have typically wanted laparoscopic surgeries to be done under general anesthesia, because the air introduced into the peritoneum to enable visualization and control in the abdomen causes breathing challenges leading to a strong preference that the patient be on artificial respiration. There is a fair bit of experimentation with laparoscopic surgery under local/regional anesthetic in the recent literature, however.

[Scott Winners]

Agree with all the above, practicing RN here. There is one MD on this site that I know of, I suspect 5 or 6 more sometimes, but they are all about woodworking here.

I have only ever worked inside ORs as a visiting technical specialist, worked in PACU for a few years. In a very general way, your son, or anyone who had a major side effect during surgery or anesthesia needs to call the anesthesiologist's office (after they are well awake) and ask "What should I say to my next anesthesiologist other than I had a cardiac arrest during my appendectomy?"

And they may not know. The difference between an anesthesiologist versus a first year medical student or a fifth grader at recess is the anesthesiologist is ready for your heart to stop while you are on the table and knows what to do about it. The doc may have no idea why the patient went into cardiac arrest, but did (demonstrably) know what to do about it. They use a lot of very powerful drugs and every individual has a slightly different enzyme system. Cardiac arrest is a risk with every surgery, it should be, almost definitely is printed somewhere on the consent form your son signed before surgery. Probably a separate anesthesia consent form.

If your son arrests three times at three distinct surgeries the third anesthesiologist might have a pretty good idea what happened, if your son tells the next he arrested once before and the third one he arrested twice before. It is not a common occurence, but is always a risk.

Personally I would rather have a good anesthesiologist who can restart my heart than be awake for abdominal surgery with a local.

[Wade Lippman]

You want to talk to the anesthesiologist! He would know what the problem was and give a much more intelligent answer than anyone here.

I nearly died 30 years ago because of a bad reaction to the anesthesia. The anesthesiologist said I should do anything I could to avoid general anesthesia as the next time I might not make it. I needed surgery a few months ago and asked if I could have a local. The anesthesiologist said he could, but it wouldn't be a good experience. Furthermore, there have been such advances in the last 30 years that it was no longer a problem. He was right.

There was an old movie in which they do an appendectomy in a submarine with a local. It was a comedy, so don't put too much faith in its veracity.