With a perfect technic, local anesthesia can also be employed with entire satisfaction for certain major operations, where the subject is suitable. Thus, herniotomies are performed with entire success, especially those cases complicated by strangulation in which the dangers arising from fecal vomiting and inspiration pneumonia, are greatly decreased by omitting the general anesthesia.
In many of the more severe conditions not to be classified as minor surgery, the surgeon may consider the comfort of the patient and his own convenience and employ local in preference to general anesthesia, even tho the patients may be of the most robust type.
In this group may be mentioned benign tumors at any visible part of the body, hernias, many scrotal and anal diseases and some conditions peculiar to the extremities, such as varicose veins. These conditions lend themselves kindly to local insensitization.
In certain emergencies where an operation must be performed immediately, such as tracheotomy, thoracentesis and strangulated hernia, local insensibility is imperative. In these operations local anesthesia is also more desirable because of the ill effects of vomiting, which are thus eliminated.
Weakness of the patient enters also as a demand for the exhibition of a local anesthesia in such operations as resection of a rib for empyema, in which instance the action of the heart or lungs is embarrassed. Other operations performed under local anesthesia for the same reason (weakness of the patient) are the exploratory operation for a probable inoperable cancer and the palliative operations such as gastrostomy, enterostomy and colostomy.
SOME VALID OBJECTIONS TO THE USE OF LOCAL ANESTHESIA
There are, however, valid objections to the general application of local anesthesia and the cases for its use should be selected with care. It does not produce relaxation nor does it give the surgeon perfect control over his patient. These are considerations which must be taken into account, especially in operating on patients of highly nervous temperaments. Though the patient may be convinced that he will suffer no pain, the mental attitude toward the local anesthesia, together with fear, may operate so strongly as to constitute a shock to the nervous system so great that a general anesthetic should be used and the local method abandoned, even were it apparently indicated.
Again, the injection of anesthetic drugs in cicatrical and inflamed tissues is quite difficult of accomplishment and because of the peculiarity of these tissues, diffusion throughout a given area is imperfect, hence insensibility is not complete.
The extravagant claims of enthusiastic advocates of this method of anesthesia have retarded its progress. Thus, in the hands of the competent operator it was given but a perfunctory trial to be discarded as impossible. At the present time, however, local anesthesia bids fair to become the method of choice, other things being equal, for many major operations not yet thus performed. Recent investigations alone these lines have developed methods of its application whereby it is possible to render insensible large areas of the integument, and regional anesthesia is performed by anesthetizing nerves proximal to the seat of operation, thus rendering amputations feasible.
A single element which has entered as a factor in retarding the progress of local anesthesia in general surgery, is that of regarding the operation as one fitted to the method rather than to the patient under consideration. It is obvious that this is a fallacy and the main issue in deciding between general and local anesthesia is: what will the patient best tolerate? In coming to a decision in the matter one should make a general survey and weigh first the general health of the patient; whether he be in perfect systemic condition or undermined by disease, whether the shock will be greater from one method than the other, and whether the part of the body to be operated on is one which will lend itself better to one method than to the other.