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View synonyms for anesthesia

anesthesia

or an·aes·the·sia

[ an-uhs-thee-zhuh ]

noun

  1. Medicine/Medical. general or local insensibility, as to pain and other sensation, induced by certain interventions or drugs to permit the performance of surgery or other painful procedures.
  2. Pathology. general loss of the senses of feeling, as pain, heat, cold, touch, and other less common varieties of sensation.
  3. Psychiatry. absence of sensation due to psychological processes, as in conversion disorders.


anesthesia

/ ˌænɪsˈθiːzɪə /

noun

  1. the usual US spelling of anaesthesia


anesthesia

/ ăn′ĭs-thēzhə /

  1. Total or partial loss of sensation to touch or pain, caused by nerve injury or disease, or induced intentionally, especially by the administration of anesthetic drugs, to provide medical treatment. The first public use of ether to anesthetize a patient in Boston in 1846 initiated widespread acceptance of anesthetics in the Western world for surgical procedures and obstetrics. General anesthesia, administered as inhalation or intravenous agents, acts primarily on the brain, resulting in a temporary loss of consciousness. Regional or local anesthesia affects sensation in a specific anatomic area, and includes topical application of local anesthetics, blocking of peripheral nerves, spinal anesthesia, and epidural anesthesia, which is used commonly during childbirth.


anesthesia

  1. Loss of sensation or consciousness. Anesthesia can be induced by an anesthetic , by acupuncture , or as the result of injury or disease.


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Word History and Origins

Origin of anesthesia1

1715–25; < New Latin < Greek anaisthēsía want of feeling. See an- 1, esthesia

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Compare Meanings

How does anesthesia compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

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Example Sentences

He’s shown empirically that when the brain networks are shut down by anesthesia or sleep or brain injury, you have complexity patterns that are different from those seen when someone is awake.

The finding that multiple anesthetics all fire up a region of the brain to promote a sleep-like state provided the first clear evidence that there are active mechanisms involved in anesthesia.

This network has also been shown to be impaired in anesthesia and after brain damage that causes disorders of consciousness.

Ketamine’s on-label use is for surgical anesthesia, but over the past two decades, neuroscientists and psychiatrists have found it remarkably effective in treating symptoms of depression.

Speaking to no one in particular, and still feeling the affect of the anesthesia, she rambles about wanting random food items and chuckles at a joke that wasn’t told.

A procedure to reopen his urinary tract could have been done under local anesthesia.

He has had operations on both knees, and they had to put him under anesthesia to clean a long gash in his left thigh.

The story of a wayward anesthesia trainee who took a near fatal dose of fentanyl hit the news this week.

Someof the injured were being detained right after they awoke from anesthesia.

"I told him that the sleep you get with anesthesia is not real sleep, not restful sleep," Quinn testified.

There was enough whiskey in the place to provide the new specimen with a near-total anesthesia.

Anesthesia from it sets in more rapidly and lasts longer than with cocaine.

While hypnotism can be used to produce anesthesia, it has many disadvantages.

One element that is extremely important for anesthesia is deep breathing.

Feldman operated with a pocketknife sterilized in a bottle of expensive Scotch and only anodyne tablets in place of anesthesia.

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anesanesthesimeter