World Anesthesia Day: A tribute to benefits of painless medicine

15Oct 2021
Editor
The Guardian
World Anesthesia Day: A tribute to benefits of painless medicine

 ​​​​​​​Insensitivity to pain, especially as artificially induced by the administration of gases or the injection of drugs before surgical operations during anesthesia body temperature falls due to the effect of drugs.

General anesthesia: Patient is unconscious and feels nothing. Patient receives medicine by breathing it or through an IV. Local anesthesia: Patient is wide awake during surgery. Medicine is injected to numb a small area. Regional anesthesia: Patient is awake, and parts of the body are asleep.

Every year on 16th October WFSA supports anaesthesia providers the world over to celebrate their profession and have a bit of fun whilst doing it.

World Anaesthesia Day commemorates the birth of anaesthesia on 16th October 1846. When doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrated the use of anaesthesia for the first time on a patient… In doing so they changed surgery forever, proving it was possible for patients to undergo surgery without the torture of pain previously associated with it.

Despite nearly 170 years having passed since that first anaesthetic procedure and the countless breakthroughs that have succeeded it, nearly 5 billion people continue to lack access to safe anaesthesia practices.

In the light of this on-going neglect, global awareness days like World Anaesthesia Day can be a powerful advocacy tool to mobilise political will, educate the general public and enforce achievements of the global anaesthesia community.

Each year for World Anaesthesia Day WFSA focus on a different aspect of anaesthesia care. This helps us to explain the varied, diverse and critical roles that anesthesiologists play in patient wellbeing.

On October 16, 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital by William. T. G. Morgan for the first time successfully used ether for general anesthesia. The day is celebrated as World   

This day is globally celebrated as an important event in the history of medicine, as it had contributed immensely to all surgical advancement both historical and modern.

 Anesthesia is one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine and has completely revolutionized the quality of healthcare that patients can receive. In fact, it’s almost impossible to imagine healthcare without the application of anesthesia.

Anesthesia is so special that it has its own day, World Anesthesia Day, on October 16th to celebrate its invention and the discipline of its use. In honour of World Anesthesia Day, we want to take a look back at the key events in the history of anesthesia, showing just how far modern medicine has advanced.

It may come as a surprise, but the first attempts at using an anesthetic go all the way back to 4000 BCE when historians believe Sumerians used opium poppy as a form of anesthesia. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that anesthesia as we know it today saw its first use.

In 1846, a dentist named William T. G. Morton was the first in the world to publicly demonstrate the use of ether anesthesia for surgery. Morton performed a painless surgery removing a tumor from a man’s neck. Before this public demonstration in Boston, Morton had tested his use of anesthesia on his dog and an on a young man for a tooth extraction.

The demonstrated surgery was a success, as the patient had no sense of pain throughout the procedure. This marked a monumental event in the history of anesthesia and its field of study exploded with interest.

Today every single person benefits from painless surgeries and medical procedures, thanks to the remarkable discoveries in the field of anesthesia dating all the way back to 4000 BCE.  

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