“Why do you shiver after anesthesia?”
I am a 42 year old female. After waking up from general anesthesia I was shivering. Why do you shiver after anesthesia?
6 Answers
It is an Anesthesia side effect but should be treated easily
During general anesthesia, temperature goes down (Hypothermia). Shivering is the mechanism the body uses to produce heat.
Most shivering is because body temperature drops while under anesthesia. However, a good portion of people are not cold and when they shiver, the reason is unknown. It is possibly related to the body's stress response because of surgery.
Under anesthesia, the skin vessels dilate and skin starts cooling and coming closer to room temperature. Body loses the ability to maintain temperature. That is why when one starts waking up, one starts shivering to bring the the temperature back to normal.
Featured snippet from the web:
Post-anesthetic *shivering is* one of the leading causes of discomfort in patients recovering from general *anesthesia*. It usually results due to the *anesthetic* inhibiting the body's thermoregulatory capability, although cutaneous vasodilation (triggered by post-operative pain) may also be a causative factor.
Post-anesthetic *shivering is* one of the leading causes of discomfort in patients recovering from general *anesthesia*. It usually results due to the *anesthetic* inhibiting the body's thermoregulatory capability, although cutaneous vasodilation (triggered by post-operative pain) may also be a causative factor.
Without being fully clothed, all patients wearing thin gowns in operating rooms lose heat rapidly in the OR environment. Anesthesiologists use a variety of measures to conserve your heat, including use of warmed intravenous fluids, forced air warming blankets, and covering extremities with warm blankets, but unless all available methods are used at the outset of surgery, patients lose heat, feel cold when they wake up, and shiver in the recovery room. Prompt and continuous conservation of heat energy is essential to maintaining normal body temperature, though some anesthesia providers are better than others in accomplishing this task.
