Many people are afraid of general anesthesia, formerly known as narcosis, when an operation is required for themselves or their child. Scientific data speaks of a small risk in general anesthesia, as in everything else. However, this risk is very low compared to the risks we constantly take in daily life. Here are some data for you:

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• The risk of dying in a car accident when one is in the car      1/112

• The risk of dying in a traffic accident as a pedestrian  1/700

• The risk of dying in an accident on a motorcycle is 1/900

• Much lower risk of dying in a plane crash, 1/8,000 

• (statistics from Time Magazine)

• The risk of losing one's life due to general anesthesia has been reported to be between 1 / 6,795 and 1 / 200,000 (1). Many current sources give it around 1/100,000. Naturally, the patient's condition and diseases at the time of surgery affect this.

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In other words, those who do not have circumcision or other simple surgeries out of fear of general anesthesia or prefer more risky local anesthesia methods should not go out to the street, even on foot.

This fear has settled in the memory of people when the adverse events that happened after the general anesthesia applications performed by inexperienced people in poor conditions once or twice a year were given in the main news on TV. Nobody knows how many hundreds of thousands of surgeries are performed annually in the country. However, hundreds of people who died in traffic accidents are no longer newsworthy because they are ordinary.

As a result, general anesthesia has ceased to be an attempt to be feared today. With general anesthesia given by experienced specialists in a good hospital, operations that take hours can be safely performed on babies of all ages and weights. General anesthesia is one of the most important conditions for performing circumcisions in a healthy, uncomplicated and surgical manner. Don't forget to ask your surgeon about the anesthesia team...

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(1) Lagasse RS (2002). "Anesthesia safety: model or myth? A review of the published literature and analysis of current original data". Anesthesiology 97 (6): 1609–1617.