It was a sunny morning in July, and I was scheduled at the outpatient center with the oral and maxillofacial surgeons for teeth extractions. One of my patients was your son, an athletic teenager, whose only medical history was asthma. According to you and him, he had not experienced any recent asthma attacks and had never been hospitalized or intubated. In terms of breathing, he said he felt “perfectly fine” for many years. The last time he took his inhaler was yesterday prior to exercising. He had not experienced any upper respiratory infections recently and was not having any difficulty breathing today. I placed my stethoscope on his chest and heard clear breath sounds. Reassured, I proceeded to finish setting up the operating room.
Confession: there are many risks and side effects of anesthesia, and we don’t always mention all of them — especially to the young, healthy patients that come for same-day surgery. The most common risks are a sore throat (from the endotracheal tube), nausea and vomiting (from the anesthetic medications and the nature of certain surgeries) and short-term memory loss (also from the anesthetic agents). The major ones are very rare and include bronchospasm (when your airways close), heart attack, stroke, severe allergic reactions leading to cardiovascular collapse and subsequently — death. I spoke to you about the common risks and mentioned your son’s slightly higher risk of an asthma exacerbation under anesthesia. You and he expressed understanding.
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