“Is anesthesia bad for your heart?”
I am a 39 year old man who will have surgery under general anesthesia. Is anesthesia bad for your heart?
5 Answers
No anesthesia is very safe and every anesthesiologist knows how to do cardiac cases.
That is a complex question. Anesthesia by itself is not bad for your heart however some people have certain heart problems In which Anesthesia can indirectly affect compensatory mechanisms that eventually can make the heart condition worse. In a healthy person anesthesia is safe on the heart. Drugs used should be choose directed towards preserving the baseline heart. Some can depress the heart function while on anesthesia but this is not permanent and there are others that do not directly affect the hears
Depends if you have a previous heart disease. I believe anesthesia is always a risk for cardiac patients. In this case, we do not use routine drugs. There are special drugs with less risk, but that doesn't means there is no risk.
Like many medications, it’s the dose. If your heart is healthy then normal doses of anesthesia should not be harmful. If you have a weak heart the normal doses may be bad for your heart and may affect the delivery of blood to organs such as the brain, kidneys and liver. Modern anesthetic agents are not cardiotoxic (toxic to the heart), though some can cause irregular heart rhythm. Thanks
Simple answer is yes. All medicines, to a greater or lesser extent, depress the function of all the vital organs as the depth of anesthesia increases.
