“Do you have to be intubated for general anesthesia?”

Because an appendectomy is intra-abdominal, a tube would be used.

No you do not. Depending on what surgery you are having will determine if you need a breathing tube.

Yes for appendectomy it is generally done with intubation. The reason is to allow the use of a muscle relaxant to relax your abdominal muscles to make it easier for the surgeon to access the abdominal cavity to get at the appendix. With muscle relaxants, you will need assistance with breathing.

For an appendectomy with general anesthesia, yes, intubation is needed. Intubation provides a mechanism by which the right amount of breathing can be assured. This is necessary to get the right amount of carbon dioxide out of your lungs, and the right amount of fresh oxygen into your lungs. Administration of anesthesia stops your ability to breathe normally for yourself, or at least markedly reduces it to unsafe levels. On the other hand, if your surgery was on an extremity, such as a hand, arm, leg, or foot, my answer would be different, and I would say that intubation of surgery would not be necessary as there are other anesthesia techniques available which would eliminate pain from the extremity. But for a surgical procedure to remove an appendix, which requires surgery to be dome on the abdomen, it is easiest and best for everybody involved, the patient, surgeon, and all other personnel in the Operating Room, for it to be done under general anesthesia and with intubation. Fortunately, an appendectomy is usually a fairly straightforward procedure, and while intubation is needed at the beginning of the procedure, extubation (removing the breathing tube) can come rapidly at the end of the procedure.