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An anaesthetic machine (British English) or anesthesia machine (American English) is a medical device used to generate and mix a fresh gas flow of medical gases and inhalational anaesthetic agents for the purpose of inducing and maintaining anaesthesia.
The first historical achievement in anesthesia occurred around 4000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia. [5] [10] [32] [33] [34] This was the advent of Ethanol (commonly known as ‘drinking alcohol’), the first general anaesthetic agent.
Initially he used imported Gwathmey machines from the USA, [2] but finding them unreliable, he developed his own continuous-flow machines. His design included cylinders for the gases and a "Boyle's Bottle" to vaporize diethyl ether. Until recently, an anaesthetic machine was often referred to as a "Boyle's Machine" in honour of his contribution.
Anesthesia is a combination of the endpoints (discussed above) that are reached by drugs acting on different but overlapping sites in the central nervous system. General anesthesia (as opposed to sedation or regional anesthesia) has three main goals: lack of movement , unconsciousness, and blunting of the stress response. In the early days of ...
General anesthesia does not always require the anesthetic machine, tested daily, as basic equipment. Anesthesia machines may differ in appearance, size and degree of sophistication but generally speaking, they consist of sections for: ventilation; Peripheral Nerve Stimulator; space for monitoring equipment; accessories; storage space; worktop
An anaesthesia machine allows composing a mixture of oxygen, anaesthetics and ambient air, delivering it to the patient and monitoring patient and machine parameters. Liquid anaesthetics are vapourised in the machine. [5] Many compounds have been used for inhalation anaesthesia, but only a few are still in widespread use.
General anaesthesia (UK) or general anesthesia (US) is medically induced loss of consciousness that renders a patient unarousable even by painful stimuli. [5] It is achieved through medications, which can be injected or inhaled, often with an analgesic and neuromuscular blocking agent .
To determine the depth of anesthesia, the anesthetist relies on a series of physical signs of the patient. In 1847, John Snow (1813–1858) [1] and Francis Plomley [2] attempted to describe various stages of general anesthesia, but Guedel in 1937 described a detailed system which was generally accepted. [3] [4] [5]