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One of the most common questions I hear from patients immediately prior to their surgical anesthetic is, “Will I have a breathing tube down my throat during anesthesia?”
The answer is: “It depends.”
Let’s answer this question for some common surgeries:
KNEE ARTHROSCOPY: Common knee arthroscopy procedures are meniscectomies and anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions. Anesthetic options include general anesthesia, regional anesthesia, or local anesthesia. Most knee arthroscopies are performed under a general anesthetic, in which the anesthesiologist injects propofol into your intravenous line to make you fall asleep. After you’re asleep, the most common airway tube used for knee arthroscopy is a laryngeal mask airway (LMA). The LMA in inserted into your mouth, behind your tongue and past your uvula, to a depth just superior to your voice box. The majority of patients will breath on their own during surgery. The LMA keeps you from snoring or having significant obstruction of your airway passages. In select patients, including very obese patients, an endotracheal tube (ETT) will be inserted instead of an LMA. The ETT requires the anesthesiologist to look directly into your voice box and insert the tube through and past your vocal cords. With either the LMA or the ETT, you’ll be asleep and will have no awareness of the airway tube except for a sore throat after surgery. A lesser number of knee arthroscopies are performed under a regional anesthetic which does not require a breathing tube. The regional anesthetic options include a blockade of the femoral nerve located in your groin or numbing the entire lower half of your body with a spinal or epidural anesthetic injected into your low back. A small number of knee arthroscopies are done with local anesthesia injected into your knee joint, in combination with intravenous sedative medications into your IV. Why are most knee arthroscopies performed with general anesthesia, which typically requires an airway tube? Because in an anesthesiologist’s hands, an airway tube is a common intervention with an acceptable risk profile. A light general anesthetic is a simpler anesthetic than a femoral nerve block, a spinal, or an epidural anesthetic.
Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA)
Endotracheal Tube (ETT)
NOSE AND THROAT SURGERIES SUCH AS TONSILLECTOMY AND RHINOPLASTY: Almost all nose and throat surgeries require an airway tube, so anesthetic gases and oxygen can be ventilated in and out through your windpipe safely during the time the surgeon is working on these breathing passages.
ABDOMINAL SURGERIES, INCLUDING LAPAROSCOPY: Almost all intra-abdominal surgeries require an airway tube to guarantee adequate ventilation of anesthetic gases and oxygen in and out of your lungs while the surgeon works inside your abdomen.
CHEST SURGERIES AND OPEN HEART SURGERIES: Almost all intra-thoracic surgeries require an airway tube to guarantee adequate ventilation of anesthetic gases and oxygen in and out of your lungs while the surgeon works inside your chest.
TOTAL KNEE REPLACEMENT AND TOTAL HIP REPLACEMENT: The majority of total knee and hip replacement surgeries are performed using spinal, epidural and/or nerve block anesthesia anesthesia to block pain to the lower half of the body. The anesthesiologist often chooses to supplement the regional anesthesia with intravenous sedation, or supplement with a general anesthetic which requires an airway tube. Why add sedation or general anesthesia to the regional block anesthesia? It’s simple: most patients have zero interest in being awake while they listen to the surgeon saw through their knee joint or hammer their new total hip into place.
CATARACT SURGERY: Cataract surgery is usually performed using numbing local anesthetic eye drop medications. Patients are wake or mildly sedated, and no airway tube is used.
COLONOSCOPY OR STOMACH ENDOSCOPY: These procedures are performed under intravenous sedation and almost never require an airway tube.
HAND OR FOOT SURGERIES: The anesthesiologist will choose the simplest anesthetic that suffices. Sometimes the choice is local anesthesia, with or without intravenous sedation. Sometimes the choice will be a regional nerve block to numb the extremity, with or without intravenous sedation. Many times the choice will be a general anesthetic, often with an airway tube. An LMA is used more frequently than an ETT.
CESAREAN SECTION: The preferred anesthetic is a spinal or epidural block which leaves the mother awake and alert to bond with her newborn immediately after childbirth. If the Cesarean section is an urgent emergency performed because of maternal bleeding or fetal distress, and there is inadequate time to insert a spinal or epidural local anesthetic into the mother’s lower back, a general anesthetic will be performed. An ETT is always used.
PEDIATRIC SURGERIES: Tonsillectomies are a common procedure and require a breathing tube as described above. Placement of pressure ventilation tubes into a child’s ears requires general anesthetic gases to be delivered via facemask only, and no airway tube is required. Almost all pediatric surgeries require general anesthesia. Infants, toddlers, and children need to be unconscious during surgery, for emotional reasons, because their parents are not present. The majority of pediatric general anesthetics require an airway tube.
CONCLUSIONS: The safe placement of airway tubes for multiple of types of surgeries, in patients varying from newborns to 100-year-olds, is one of the reasons physician anesthesiologists train for many years.
Prior to surgery, some patients are alarmed at the notion of such a breathing tube invading their body. They fear they’ll be awake during the placement of the breathing tube, or that they’ll choke on the breathing tube.
Be reassured that almost every breathing tube is placed after your unconsciousness is assured, and breathing tubes are removed prior to your return to consciousness. A sore throat afterward is common, but be reassured this is a minor complaint that will clear in a few days.
If you have any questions, be sure to discuss them with your own physician anesthesiologist when you meet him or her prior to your surgical procedure.
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I asked my nurse before surgery if I would have a breathing tube during surgery (ankle arthroscopy) she said no. She was an anesthesia nurse, I feel like she knew the truth but lied to me. When I woke my throat was sore so I asked a different nurse and she said that yes I had had a breathing tube. I am dumbfounded, did the anesthetic nurse really not know or was she lying to me. If I was little I could see her lying so I wouldn’t be scared but I was 15 not scared at all and just wanted to know what to expect.
I don’t know if there were any mistruths, but it seems from your history that you had a breathing tube and you didn’t know you were going to have one. The good news is that a simple breathing tube, called a laryngeal mask airway, or LMA, is typical for this sort of case. If you had no complication except the sore throat, your outcome was good, despite your expectations of not having a tube.
Hi doctor, thank you so much for writing this article. I have an upcoming surgery coming up. To be honest, I am really scared. My last surgery and one of my only surgeries was an apendectomy a few years ago. When I awoke from surgery, it was extremely difficult and painful to breathe. It was so scary. I kept telling the nurses i couldn’t breathe, begging for help. Finally one nurse sat with me holding my hand for a while, but it did little to help the breathing. It was a very hard few days before it went away. To this day, I still don’t know what caused it, don’t know how to address it with my new surgeon and anestesiologist. Have you heard of this? What caused this? And how do I prevent it from happening during this surgery? I am a smoker, who quits for long periods of times. So on and off again. I am overweight. But I do really try hard to be healthy. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you so much.
Tell your anesthesia provider exactly what you remember from the last surgery. He or she may be able to access your medical records to see what drugs you had, and how your anesthetic was managed. Even if you’re an overweight patient and you smoke, it’s possible for you to have an uneventful general anesthetic. The specifics of your anesthesia care will depend on the type of surgery you’re scheduled for. Trust your anesthesiologist and be honest with your fears and concerns.
Thank you so much. By the way, the surgery I am having is a hernia repair surgery. Sorry I did not incude that, I should have.
I had a triple by-pass surgery -post 3 weeks . I am getting a total rejection of my full dentures , tried 4-different dental adhesives….all lead to with in a few hours a coughing which gets more violent until I either remove them and if I don’t violent vomiting results. Upon removal of the dentures and adhesive, coughing stops just like a light switch was switched off. It is not getting any better ??? HELP me
Kenneth,
I’ve never heard of this specific scenario occurring after general anesthesia, or after a triple bypass. I don’t think it was any anesthesia drug or side effect.
Perhaps the anatomy of your upper airway/gums/jaw was altered during your operating room/intensive care unit experience. I’d suggest you revisit the dental professional who designed your dentures for a consult regarding refitting.
Rick
Hello, thank you for allowing me to ask this question to a reputable anesthesiologist as it is one I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time! Every time I have surgery, they put a tube down my throat and if my surgery is 3 hours or longer I wake up with an EXTREMELY, and I mean, EXTREMELY sore throat. It’s so bad that I am in agony for hours. It’s gotten so bad that I am now at the point that when I go to the hospital I take beef,chicken, or vegetable stock (bullions) that are nice and salty and I get hot water from the hospital and sip on the salty water to help my throat. I also take some salty potato chips. It is seriously torture trying to get over the throat pain after surgery.
So my question is…. and don’t laugh…. why can’t anesthesiologists put Vasoline or another type of lubricant on the outside of the tube before shoving it down your throat? It could even be Wet Stuff or some other adult lubricant. It would solve so many problems and would probably help eliminate the extreme sore throat that we all experience after surgery! Why can’t anesthesiologists consider this? Can you please share this with others in your field? I’m so very tempted at my next surgery to take a bottle of Wet Stuff with me and tell the doc to please lube up my breathing tube before shoving it down my throat before surgery.
Sore throat after a breathing tube is very common, and is a risk I explain to every patient prior to their surgery (if they will require a breathing tube). Yes, we do put a lubricant on one type of breathing tube, called an LMA or a Laryngeal Mask Airway. But the second type of breathing tube, called an endotracheal tube, is inserted into the windpipe and is not routinely lubricated. The windpipe, or trachea, is not a passage that we are trained to add lubricants, jellies, or ointments into, mainly because it is a direct route to the lungs. Lubricants, jellies, or ointments in the trachea or bronchial tubes can obstruct airflow or make breathing more difficult after the tube is removed. Keep in mind that when laypersons use the term “throat,” they are usually referring to the body’s swallowing mechanism. The “sore throat” after an endotracheal tube is inside the breathing passageway, the trachea or windpipe. The discomfort will pass in time, and is almost never a serious medical problem. I agree it’s painful and annoying, especially in your case. If the hospital or surgery center stocks a local lidocaine anesthetic spray kit, called a “lidocaine tracheal anesthesia” kit, or an LTA, I routinely spray the liquid topical anesthesia lidocaine into the trachea just before I insert the endotracheal tube. But some facilities do not stock the device as it is an added expense that does not change overall outcome.
Hello Doctor,Just want to know if patient has hemophilia how long he must take factors after surgery as well how many days he must be given sedatives?Is it ok if the patient is not waking up due to sedation for too long is it ok or is anything going wrong in this case Doctor?
The patient would be treated with clotting factors as long as necessary to assure a lack of surgical bleeding. The issue of sedation is unrelated to hemophilia. Postoperative sedation/pain medications are related to the type and extent of surgery and any complications rather than to hemophilia.