Anesthesia and blood flow

[shad420w]

Hello,

I am an MS III.

My senior asked me to give a 4 minute talk on anesthesia's effects on blood flow. I keep using google and up to date to research this topic and I am not coming up with anything good. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Or provide some information on the general principles?

Thanks!

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[Gimlet]

How about an anesthesiology textbook? Basics of Anesthesia by Stoelting & Miller should do the trick.

 

[Arch Guillotti]

Or you can try Miller's Anesthesia.

These resources are probably online in your schools library website.

You may want to focus on a specific area such as cerebral bloodflow. Try searching for the term autoregulation. You should find plenty of stuff.

 

[Planktonmd]

You might want to ask a more specific question so people would understand what you want to know:
When you say "blood flow" do you mean cardiac output? blood flow to certain organs?...
When you say "anesthesia" do you mean certain anesthetic agents? Local anesthesia? Regional anesthesia?...
If you are saying what I think you are saying then here is your answer:
Most general anesthetics interfere with hemodynamics and either can increase or decrease the blood flow to certain organs and in order to understand these effects we need to study the pharmacodynamics of each one of these anesthetic agents and their metabolites.

 

[fakin' the funk]

I am an MS III.

My senior asked me to give a 4 minute talk on anesthesia's effects on blood flow. I keep using google and up to date to research this topic and I am not coming up with anything good. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Or provide some information on the general principles?

That's a hella vague idea for a talk.

Since you said "my senior" and used the vague term "anesthesia" I take it you're on a team-based specialty e.g. surgery or medicine...in which case something simple like "(most) anesthetics cause some kind of vasodilation, here's why, how, and where" might suffice. For an anesthesiology resident, yea, you'll wanna go deeper.

In any case, Basics of Anesthesia as suggested above or Clinical Anesthesiology would be good places to knock the thing out.

 

[lazylikeapanda]

Since its such a broad topic and you're only given 4 minutes to talk about something, why don't you narrow it down to a volatile anesthetic, i.e sevoflurane and whether it causes your bp to go up or down and what patients you would use it in. that should be enough to make your team happy or put them to sleep.

 

[Consigliere]

Say: "Anesthesia increases blood flow to all organs by causing vasodilation." Say it very slowly though since IT IS a 4 minute talk.

 

[shad420w]

Yes I am on Surgery and it was a vague topic. My senior told me to look at how it affects cerebral, renal and GI flow.

Any hints?

 

[Licoricestick]

Yes I am on Surgery and it was a vague topic. My senior told me to look at how it affects cerebral, renal and GI flow.

Any hints?

Well, most of this stuff is basic science that has been around for a while, so forget recent research and stick with the textbooks. Stick with the basic textbooks, because non anaesthetists generally don't know much about anaesthesia.

It's pretty clear that the person asking the question doesn't understand just how broad "anaesthesia" is - see the points people have made above. But he probably means general anaesthesia with inhalational agents because that's what most people perceive as a "normal anaesthestic". However, depending on what area of surgery it is they may also have been more exposed to spinals - so you should have a quick read about what they do too.

In non disease states blood flow to these organs isn't a huge issue (yes, we want to perfuse brain, heart and kidneys, generally in that order of preference - but in a healthy person the only way that doesn't happen is if they are seriously hypotensive) so you're going to need to mention relevant disease states eg: look up cerebral autoregulation and raised ICP.

And that's as much help as I'm prepared to give you - hit a book and good luck

And who on earth asks for a 4min talk

 

[BobBarker]

Just go with what happens using versed, fentanyl, succ, propofol on induction and maintenance on des or sevo. You might want to mention something about when doing an operation where the patient is sitting up (shoulders) you need to keep the pressure a touch higher to perfuse the brain better.

 

[pszotek]

Just some info on the probable motivation behind you being pimped on such a vague topic. I suppose you are on a surgery rotation and I would be that you senior failed the ABSITE this year and had to find the answers to the topics given regarding the questions he missed (as we have to do in our program). One of the topics given was and I quote "Effect of Anesthesia on Blood Flow". Not the answer to your question but the answer behind the motivation to have you do someone elses work. Good luck!