what is the difference between local and general anesthesia and which is best?!
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Local anesthesia is just a numbing agent on a specific area of the body.
General anesthesia is being knocked out.
Which is better? It depends on the reason you need it, but local anesthesia is safer yet generally less comfortable.
Other Answers:
Local is just for the area they are working on (you're awake) while general is for the entire body (it usually puts you to sleep).
General anethesia requires that you are made unconscious and the process has significantly more risks than local anesthesia.
General Anethesia is the bomb for about 2 seconds !
Might you be asking about regional anesthesia as well? General anesthesia is where they knock you out and usually insert a breathing device, keep you asleep and wake you up afterwards. Local anesthesia is numbing medicine applied directly to the site -- the numbing medicine stings and is not always effective. Sometimes it's not possible to put get an area numb just by injecting local anesthestics. Sometimes they combine local anesthesia with sedation (also known as MAC or monitored anesthesia care). This means you can be sleepy but breathing on your own.
In addition there is regional anesthesia, where they can do nerve blocks to numb up the entire arm, for example, or they can do spinal or epidural anesthesia to numb you from the chest on down. Regional anesthesia can be combined with sedation as well.
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