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Anesthesia - what to ask your doctor - child

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What to ask your doctor about anesthesia - child

Your child is scheduled to have a surgery or procedure. You will need to talk with your child's surgeon about the type of anesthesia that will be best for your child. Below are some questions you may want to ask.

Questions

BEFORE ANESTHESIA

Which type of anesthesia is best for my child and the procedure that my child is having?

  • General anesthesia
  • Spinal or epidural anesthesia
  • Conscious sedation

When does my child need to stop eating or drinking before the anesthesia? What if my child is breastfeeding?

When do my child and I need to get to the hospital on the day of the surgery? Is the rest of our family allowed to be there too?

If my child is taking the following medicines, what should I do?

  • Aspirin, ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil), naproxen (Aleve), arthritis medicines, vitamin E, warfarin (Coumadin), or any other medicines that make it hard for the child's blood to clot
  • Vitamins, minerals, herbs, or other supplements
  • Medicines for heart problems, lung problems, diabetes, allergies, or seizures
  • Other medicines the child is supposed to take everyday

If my child has asthma, diabetes, seizures, heart disease, or any other medical problems, do I need to do anything special before my child has anesthesia?

Can my child take a tour of the surgery and recovery areas of the hospital before the surgery?

DURING ANESTHESIA

  • Will my child be awake or aware of what is happening?
  • Will my child feel any pain?
  • Will someone be watching to make sure my child is OK?
  • How long may I stay with my child?

AFTER ANESTHESIA

  • How soon will my child wake up?
  • When can I see my child?
  • How soon before my child can get up and move around?
  • How long will my child need to stay?
  • Will my child have any pain?
  • Will my child have an upset stomach?
  • If my child had spinal or epidural anesthesia, will my child have a headache afterwards?
  • What if I have more questions after the surgery? Who can I contact?
Review Date: 10/20/2024

Reviewed By

Neil K. Kaneshiro, MD, MHA, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

References

American Society of Anesthesiologists website. Statement on practice recommendations for pediatric anesthesia. www.asahq.org/standards-and-practice-parameters/statement-on-practice-recommendations-for-pediatric-anesthesia. Updated October 13, 2021. Accessed November 18, 2024.

Vutskits L, Davidson A, Soriano SG. Pediatric anesthesia. In: Gropper MA, ed. Miller's Anesthesia. 10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2025:chap72.

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The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.
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