Hello everyone,

I'm 25 years old. I've had a large ruptured l5 s1 disc for about 8 months now. It causes a good amount of pain down my left leg, especially in the morning. I also get tingling and what I think is leg weakness. I've done the conservative treatment approach and it hasn't helped. I talked to my neurosurgeon and I've decided to have a microdiscectomy two weeks from today on March 4th. I'm just very worried about having general anesthesia. Some of it has to do with my having mitral valve prolapse. It causes me to have palpitations. I also take a low dose ( 10 mg) of Lisinorpril for hypertension and 10mg of simvastatin for cholesterol. Is general anesthesia pretty safe? Does it feel like you're falling asleep? My neurosurgen said that most of the anesthesia will be given to me through IV with a little through gas. Will they give me propofol? Also, will I have to be on a ventilator? From what I understand, if you're on smaller doses of propfol you will probably breathe on your own while bigger doses will require a ventilator. I'm guessing when I had my wisdom teeth out I was given a smaller dose. Sorry for the long post,


Joey

I think that if your neurosurgeon and anesthesiologist have not expressed concern about anesthesia risk factors, then don't sweat it. There are risk factors associated with general anesthesia but at 25 you probably don't have many (or any) to be too worried about. You are a little young though for HTN and CHOL meds. As far as diprivan is concerned, it is very low on the list of side effects, hence its popularity. And if you surgery is a one-level discectomy, I would think your down time might be in the order of 45-90 minutes. If you were a significant surgical risk, you can bet that your surgeon would think twice before taking you to the OR AND you would know about it!

Thank you for the info! I feel better now. I will keep you updated!

Joey