Patients are sedated total usually looks like a good night's sleep. But the American researchers said that the condition is more similar to coma than sleep soundly.
"General anesthesia is pharmacological coma and not sleep," said Dr. Nicholas Schiff of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, as quoted by FoxNews.
Researchers said that a general anesthetic is more similar to the drugs used to induce coma. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine is based on 3-year study to find out the similarities and differences from sleep, anesthesia and coma.Doctors and patients describe general anesthesia like the sleeper, but that there is no significant difference between the condition of the sleeper and the phase of general anesthesia.
At bedtime typically involves several steps that must be passed until finally someone sleep soundly. While in general anesthesia patients are usually brought up to a certain phase and left in that position during operation. This phase is very much like when someone was in a coma.
"When given a general anesthesia, the brain becomes very very quiet and activity of neurons, or nerve is dramatically reduced. This condition occurs in people who are comatose," said Dr. Shiff.
The anesthesiologist generally know a safe way to keep the patient in a particular phase, but most are not familiar with the neural mechanisms that occur in people coma to help her survive.
Recovery or awaken people who were given general anesthesia is much faster than a comma. For that experts can study how people wake up from anesthesia as a model to predict the stage of coma. It is expected there new strategies that can be done to help doctors resuscitate patients who are comatose
