Anaesthesia

Our anaesthetists look after you during an operation. They put you to sleep, or numb the part being operated on, to control pain, and watch your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure throughout. Before a planned operation, you see one of our anaesthetists for a pre-anaesthetic check-up in our Anaesthesiology OPD, which runs every day.

We have three consultant anaesthetists. Our anaesthesia team covers every operation we perform: general surgery, orthopaedics, obstetrics, paediatric surgery, neurosurgery, urology and maxillofacial surgery. It also covers our catheterisation laboratory and coronary care unit, and our intensive care unit is led by a consultant in intensive care medicine.

Services and procedures

• General anaesthetic: you are asleep and unaware for the whole operation
• Regional anaesthetic: an injection numbs a whole region, such as below the waist; you may stay awake while that region is numb
• Local anaesthetic: only the small area being worked on is numbed
• Sedation: medicine that makes you drowsy and relaxed, often given with a local or regional block
• Anaesthesia for the cathlab: cover for procedures in our catheterisation laboratory and coronary care unit