Local anesthesia involves numbing a specific part of the body to prevent any feeling of pain during surgical procedures. An anesthetic drug - which has numbing effects - is applied to a certain part of the patient's body.
It is typically carried out in combination with sedation - which calms the patient and reduces stress levels - so that patients can undergo surgery without experiencing unbearable pain or distress.
In many cases local anesthesia is considered to be safer than general anesthesia (such as in a cesarean section). Although it is not uncommon for anesthetists to combine methods of both local and general anesthesia.
According to The Nemours Foundation, the type of anesthesia used will depend on many factors, including patients' age, weight, allergies they may have, what part of the body is to be operated on, and their current medical condition.
As local anesthesia only lasts for a short time, it is primarily used for minor outpatient procedures, where the patient can leave on the same day of the surgery.
According to Medilexicon's medical dictionary, Local Anesthesia is:
"a general term referring to topical, infiltration, field block, or nerve block anesthesia but usually not to spinal or epidural anesthesia; may also refer to pharmacologic agents used to achieve local anesthesia."
Local anesthesia not used just for surgery
In addition to being used to reduce pain during surgery, local anesthesia is sometimes applied to help diagnose the cause of some chronic conditions, it is also used for pain relief following an operation (postoperative pain relief).
A team of scientists at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson showed that local anesthesia is probably more beneficial than traditional opioids for managing pain after total knee replacement surgery.
Researchers at Uludag University School of Medicine, Bursa, Turkey, reported in the World Journal of Gastroenterology that the use of local anesthetics may ease symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Local anesthetics may be effective for treating neuropathic pain, researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, reported in The Cochrane Library. Ivo W. Tremont-Lukats, M.D., wrote "Intravenous lidocaine and oral derivatives relieve pain from damage to the nervous system. ....(these drugs) were safe in controlled clinical trials for neuropathic pain, were better than placebo and were as effective as other analgesics."
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