Tummy Tuck Considerations: Understanding How Anesthesia Works

A tummy tuck procedure includes anesthesia. The kind of anesthesia that will be used on you as a patient of cosmetic surgery is not necessarily up to you and is determined by a variety of factors. It is based upon the magnitude of the procedure, the location for the operation, your overall level of health, and who will administer the anesthesia. Before you have the abdominoplasty procedure you need to discuss the anesthesia options with the cosmetic surgeon and find out which option he recommends is the most suitable choice for you and why. This is a subject that must be discussed at length with the plastic surgeon before you book the date and time for the tummy tuck.

You may wonder why anesthesia is even required. You would not want to be without it for tummy tuck surgery but why exactly do you need it so much? The main reason is that it prevents the patient from experiencing any pain and it keeps the patient in an immobile state so that the surgeon is able to perform the procedure. But it also has to do with having control over the body and the defense mechanisms that are in place to cope with the pain response.

Think of it this way, you know the difference between a cut that is intentional (such as if you required emergency surgery) and a cut that occurs by accident (such as if you cut your finger while slicing up vegetables). But your body is unable to differentiate between the two types of cuts.

If you get injured or cut an area of your body then it immediately reacts to the trauma that has taken place. A number of things take place all at once as a reaction to it. Your heart rate speeds up while your blood pressure also rises. Your body then begins the process of repairing and healing itself. What anesthesia does is it blocks these reactions that your body must go through until after your operation has been completed. It would block the reactions during a tummy tuck as it would for all other types of surgeries, elective or not. Anesthesia prevents your body from working too hard while you are being operated on. The body's stress levels are therefore not as great.

Another way in which anesthesia matters is because as a patient you do not remember your surgery and for that reason you do not have to relive it in your head over and over again. If you do not remember having it then it will not upset you and not cause you any nightmares. Having any type of surgery be it a tuck or something else can be very traumatic to the body. Healing can take place at a faster pace when there is no recollection of the pain that was involved in the operation.