How to avoid headaches after spinal anesthesia

Why does nausea and vomiting occur after general anesthesia?

General anesthesia is a type of anesthesia that artificially induces a person into an unconscious state with the possibility of returning consciousness.
It is used to block painful syndromes during surgical interventions and various medical procedures. You can achieve loss of pain with the help of special medications selected in a certain dosage. Nausea and vomiting after epidural and spinal anesthesia are also a consequence of the effects of drugs on the centers of the brain. As a result of spinal anesthesia, an anesthetic is injected into the cavities between the membranes of the spinal cord, causing their irritation.

Also, the introduction of additional fluid as part of the anesthetic can lead to changes in intracranial pressure, minor changes in which are sensitive to the human body. Since symptoms develop as a result of effects on the central nervous system, they may be accompanied by dizziness, especially when changing body position.

Symptoms resolve on their own, usually on the day of surgery, but can last for several days.

The causes of nausea and vomiting after spinal anesthesia may also be associated with peritoneal irritation and the use of concomitant medications.

The use of local anesthesia, as a rule, does not cause central symptoms. But even after local anesthesia, as well as after other types of anesthesia, nausea, vomiting and dizziness can be a consequence of nervous overstrain, which is surgical treatment and preparation for it. Symptoms disappear on the day of surgery; taking sedatives helps to cope with them.

What is spinal anesthesia

Spinal anesthesia is a type of local anesthesia. Its purpose is to turn off the nerve endings that innervate the lower half of the body. This occurs due to a disruption in the exchange of signals between the brain and spinal cord. Painkillers are injected directly into the spinal space of the spine. A small volume of cerebrospinal fluid is first removed from it so that pressure does not increase. To manipulate and puncture the dura mater, a specialist uses a special needle. He inserts it into the area between the vertebrae at the junction of the lower back and the back.

The procedure is performed or supervised by an anesthesiologist. If everything is done correctly, the approach will not only neutralize pain, but will also reduce the likelihood of bleeding during the operation. Due to these properties, local administration of an anesthetic is indicated for caesarean section, gynecological and urological interventions, and procedures in the back, pelvis, and lower extremities. If the patient has a headache after post-spinal anesthesia, this indicates a violation of the technique of performing the manipulation.

Causes

Headache appears after different types of anesthesia, it can be local and general, and both methods of pain relief have different effects on the body.

Doctors believe that almost everyone has a headache after surgery and this is normal. A pathological process will occur if headaches after surgery do not go away on their own within a couple of weeks.

Statistics show that females experience attacks more often after surgery.

The risk of pain after anesthesia increases with each year of life and the older the person, the more likely this side effect is.

Headaches (cephalgia) are a consequence of both local and general anesthesia, although these types of effects on the patient’s body are fundamentally different. According to doctors, such symptoms are acceptable within 14 days from the date of use of anesthesia.

The main causes of cephalalgia in the postoperative period:

• lack of water in the body;
• predisposition to migraine pain;
• side effects of anesthetics;
• insufficiently high body mass index;
• age-related changes;
• drop in blood pressure;
• endocrine pathologies;
• stressful conditions.

How to prevent

Why does my head hurt after anesthesia? Because precautions were not followed. You can try to reduce the risk of pain in advance. To do this you need:

• Take your choice of a qualified anesthesiologist seriously;
• Purchase a thin needle for anesthesia;
• Follow doctors' recommendations.

It is important to prepare in advance before surgery. To do this you need to: refuse food 8 hours in advance, reduce the amount of drinking, do not smoke, take a walk in the fresh air, get enough sleep in advance. Spinal anesthesia is administered in a sitting position. You need to bend your back well, lower your chin to your chest, put your hands on your knees. The main thing is not to move during the administration of anesthesia. The needle should be no more than 25 G. During the postoperative period, it is important to observe bed rest. Lie on the bed in a horizontal position, drink more water.

The most important thing for headache pain is not to self-medicate. It is better to clarify the question with a doctor. He will examine you and prescribe treatment. Usually the first step is to prescribe painkillers, such as:

You can try to help yourself get rid of headaches in the following ways:

• If your blood pressure is low, drink coffee. Caffeine constricts blood vessels;
• Take painkillers;
• Ask your doctor to give you an IV with magnesium or a solution of glucose and caffeine;
• Organize bed rest with a minimum amount of light;
• Lie on your stomach. The pressure in the spinal cord will increase and the spasm will decrease.

If headaches continue for 1-2 days after the anesthetic is administered, the anesthesiologist may suggest placing blood patches. Blood is taken from a vein and injected into the back, to the place where the previous puncture was made. This will stop the leakage of spinal fluid. Usually the pain disappears after a few hours. Headache after anesthesia is an unpleasant condition and brings serious discomfort. Therefore, it is worth foreseeing this symptom in advance and trying to minimize the risks of its occurrence. Be healthy!

Treatment of diseases through surgery is stressful for the whole body. The operation is performed under anesthesia, which often causes a number of side effects.

In some cases, a headache begins to ache after anesthesia (narcosis). It happens that this alarming sign is not paid attention to, patiently waiting for everything to go away on its own.

This symptom should not be treated with disdain - after anesthesia, a headache can occur for several reasons, each of which requires urgent action. What factors cause headaches, what remedies will cope with the side effect, in what cases should you sound the alarm and immediately go to the doctor?

Is it possible to prevent the development of this complication?

Since more than half of all patients have headaches, doctors are taking measures to prevent the development of this complication.

To prevent headaches, anesthesiologists need to do the following manipulations:

1. Monitor blood pressure levels. One of the main tasks of an anesthesiologist during an operation is to control and maintain pressure at optimal or slightly elevated levels. It tends to sharply decrease, especially during spinal anesthesia.
2. Prevent the development of dehydration. Throughout the operation and in the postoperative period, patients undergo intravenous administration of saline and colloid solutions. With their help, dehydration and electrolyte imbalance in the blood are prevented.

In the postoperative period, the patients themselves must strictly follow the recommendations of the attending physician. On the first day, you should not get out of bed abruptly. You also need to drink a sufficient amount of fluid, previously agreed with your doctor.

Folk remedies

Why not use folk remedies to relieve a headache attack? Most of them are safer than known analgesics. But it is better to use folk remedies after consulting a doctor, since many of them are in no way inferior in power to ready-made medications.

You can fight headaches with folk remedies

Below are the main folk remedies that can be used to relieve a headache attack:

1. Tea with mint. Pour a teaspoon of mint into a glass of boiling water and leave to steep for several hours. You need to drink 100 ml of this tea before bed. It has a good effect on the functioning of the central nervous system, calming a person and eliminating vascular spasm.
2. Fresh juice of berries such as viburnum, currants, blueberries can be drunk to relieve pain, half a glass 2 times a day after the main meal. These berries contain a high concentration of vitamin C and antioxidants; they regulate the functioning of the central nervous system.
3. Hot foot baths are a time-tested remedy for migraines and headaches. Blood “leaves” from the head and flows to the legs, thereby relieving tension in the vessels of the brain.

Headache is the most common complication of general and spinal anesthesia. It occurs due to decreased arterial blood pressure and general dehydration of the entire body. When treating this complication, you can use medications and folk remedies. Before taking them, you should consult your doctor.

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Why do symptoms occur after epidural and spinal anesthesia?

Mild unpleasant symptoms (dizziness, nausea) do not require treatment and go away on their own. If nausea as a result of general anesthesia is accompanied by uncontrollable vomiting, this can become dangerous for the course of the postoperative period, cause failure of the sutures, and the development of peritonitis, therefore, with such symptoms, antiemetic drugs are prescribed to suppress the gag reflex; they block the centers of the brain and help relieve dangerous manifestations.

If, even after discharge from the hospital, the head is dizzy, and the nausea does not go away for a long time, the patient often vomits, to find out why this is happening, it is necessary to contact a neurologist. If the cause is dysfunction of the nervous system, as well as the development of toxic encephalopathy, a neurologist will be able to select the necessary treatment to eliminate unpleasant symptoms.

If nausea and dizziness are associated with excessive suspiciousness of the patient, a neurologist can also identify this by conducting a neurological examination. The doctor will find suitable medications for such a case, and sometimes a conversation and confirmation that there is nothing to worry about will be enough for the patient.

Treatment methods

If your head hurts due to strong anxiety or stress before surgery, then the symptoms begin to subside within 1-2 days.

A headache, the cause of which lies in changes in the functioning of the body and its systems, will last longer and often requires the help of doctors to relieve it.

You should go to the doctor if the headache from anesthesia lasts for 10-14 days, and the intensity is quite high.

When you have a headache, it is very difficult to concentrate and relax. Something must be done about this complication. If your head hurts for more than one week after surgery, you should contact your doctor and find out why this is happening.

You can get rid of headaches with the following medications:

1. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Diclofenac, Indomethacin, Paracetamol, Nimesulide and Celecoxib.
2. Analgesics: Analgin, Baralgin, Ketorolac or Ketanov.
3. Antispasmodics: Nosh-pa, Spazmalgon.

Their use must be discussed with your doctor. Since they may not be compatible with the medications that the patient is already taking, or they may harm the weakened body after surgery.

It must be remembered that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics negatively affect the gastric mucosa. They should be taken only after a large meal. Their use is prohibited for people with gastritis or peptic ulcers.

If immediately after anesthesia you feel pain and feel dizzy, then this is considered normal. During the first three days, similar complications are possible. Usually the patient is given painkillers, which are necessary after surgery in any case. This dulls the pain syndrome, while at the same time the patient restores water balance. If the symptom does not go away after a week, then begin treatment.

How to relieve a headache after anesthesia? For these purposes the following is used:

• Analgesics: Ketanov, Analgin, Ketorolac or Baralgin.
• Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: Paracetamol, Diclofenac, Indomethacin, Celecoxib and Nimesulide.
• Antispasmodics: Spasmalgon, Nosh-pa.

Sometimes the answer to the question of why my head hurts so much after anesthesia is very simple. General anesthesia often provokes hypertension, especially when the patient has a predisposition to it. But high blood pressure almost always causes a migraine.

In this case, it is important to reduce the pressure. If it is not significantly increased, then antispasmodics may also be suitable.

They usually reduce by 10-20 units. When severe hypertension is observed, then special, stronger drugs are needed, which can only be prescribed by the attending doctor.

If you have a headache after local anesthesia, then in this case we are more likely talking about toxins contained in painkillers. This symptom is often observed after dental anesthesia. In this case, the pain will go away after the harmful substances are removed, and for this you need to drink a lot of fluids.

Sometimes migraine is associated with postoperative cognitive dysfunction. After all, general anesthesia turns off consciousness, that is, a kind of reboot occurs in the brain.

After it, not only a migraine may occur, but also memory loss, distraction, and learning difficulties. Such complications can last for a very long time, causing severe discomfort for the patient.

If you have a headache after anesthesia, what should you do? In addition to painkillers, neuroleptics and nootropic drugs are sometimes prescribed, but only a neurologist has the right to prescribe all this after a thorough examination of the patient.

Brain training is a must. This brings results, but not immediately.

Patients are asked to solve logic problems, solve crosswords, and play chess. All this provokes the brain to work.

As soon as it begins to function in the normal mode that it was before the operation, the migraines will stop.

Headache after general anesthesia, causes, symptoms, treatment

There are a lot of patients who have headaches after anesthesia. This is one of the most common side effects of general anesthesia.

With local anesthesia, headaches almost never occur, although there are exceptions.

But it’s one thing when the headache is mild in the first few hours after waking up from medicated sleep, and quite another when the pain is prolonged and intense, turning into a migraine. Why is this happening and what to do?

Kinds

Headaches can be classified according to several criteria.

After anesthesia, the headache is usually tolerable and short-lived and goes away a couple of hours after the cleansing drip. In patients with cardiovascular problems, headaches in the postoperative period may be pulsating, but the condition also soon returns to normal.

After epidural anesthesia

Local injection anesthesia causes headaches in exceptional cases. And after epidural anesthesia, the headache is no less common than after general anesthesia.

“Epidural” refers to regional pain relief that numbs the lower body by injecting an anesthetic into the nerve bundle that controls sensation in the legs and pelvic area. The causes of headaches are the same as during general anesthesia.

And if the patient has problems with the spine, then the likelihood of this symptom occurring increases.

By the way! The patient's head often begins to hurt right during spinal anesthesia, because during the puncture a large amount of cerebrospinal fluid is lost, which leads to a sharp decrease in pressure.

If you feel a headache, the patient should immediately report it to the doctor. At the same time, you should try not to move, so as not to worsen your condition and not interfere with the anesthesiologist and the medical team.

How to fix

When the patient comes to his senses after anesthesia, he must immediately inform the doctor about his condition. Even a mild headache is a serious symptom that should not be kept silent about.

At the same time, it is important to accurately assess the intensity of pain, without exaggeration or understatement, so that the doctor can choose the appropriate drugs to restore the body from the anesthesia and more accurately calculate the dosage.

Important! Under no circumstances should you take painkillers brought by relatives without your doctor’s knowledge! Among them there may be medications that are incompatible with those given to the patient in the form of droppers, injections, or the same tablets.

The following medications may be prescribed for headaches after anesthesia:

• anti-inflammatory non-steroidal drugs;
• antispasmodics;
• narcotic painkillers (for severe pain);
• antiemetics (for migraines);
• plasma expanders (at very low pressure).

If the headache is tolerable and more like dizziness, it makes sense to wait a little. Perhaps after some time the narcotic medications will disappear from the body and the headache will go away. Sleep or just rest (without TV, tablet, smartphone) often helps.

At home

For some people, headaches begin to appear after leaving the hospital.

This is also a common phenomenon, which is associated with stress in the form of anesthesia and a general deterioration in a person’s health.

If your headache is infrequent (once every 2-3 weeks), you can get by with simple analgesics (Analgin, Citramon, Ibuprofen). If headaches become periodic, you should consult a doctor.

In order not to constantly stuff yourself with pills, you can turn to traditional medicine. Because The causes of headaches are most often insufficient blood supply to the vessels of the head and nervous tension, then the advice will be aimed at normalizing these processes.

• A hot foot bath will improve blood flow and relieve fatigue.
• Placing your feet in hot water and putting ice on your neck will relieve migraines.
• You need to add mint, chamomile, and viburnum to tea. These are herbs that calm the nervous system.
• Tea with linden blossom and honey is also useful for blood supply.
• Regular cervical massage plus warm-up (circular rotations, turns, bends) will also help. This is especially useful for those whose work involves low head mobility.
• It is necessary to ventilate the room to saturate the air with oxygen or take a walk every day.

The tips listed above will help not only those who often experience headaches after anesthesia, but also everyone else who often suffers from this symptom.

Prevention

There are two preventative measures that anesthesiologists try to take during surgery to minimize the risk of a person developing post-operative headaches and other vascular problems. The first is special monitoring of the blood pressure of a patient under anesthesia. The second is intravenous administration of special solutions to maintain water-salt balance and prevent dehydration.

People who periodically suffer from headaches of unknown origin should warn the anesthesiologist about this during a conversation before surgery. Then the patient is additionally examined (if the complaints are significant, and there is time and opportunity for further examination), because there is a risk of a brain tumor, which may become a contraindication to surgery or one or another type of anesthesia.

Why do I have a headache after general anesthesia? Link to main publication

Source: https://snarkozom.ru/narkoz/pochemu-bolit-golova-posle-obshhego-narkoza/.html

Body tremors after surgery

There is no need to treat headaches after anesthesia caused by stressful situations, since they go away without outside intervention within the next 24 hours. In other cases, if the discomfort remains consistently strong for longer than 2 weeks, the patient requires mandatory medical care.

After an examination by a specialist, the patient will be able to familiarize himself with the treatment regimen, which will necessarily include drug therapy. To speed up the recovery process, you should follow several rules:

1. Get as much rest as possible (during the first 24 hours it is better not to leave bed at all, even in the absence of unpleasant symptoms).
2. Do not move too quickly, avoid significant physical exertion.
3. Drink clean, still water in sufficient quantities.
4. Take hot foot baths (this stimulates blood flow to the brain).
5. Regularly walk in the fresh air and ventilate the room to ensure sufficient oxygen supply (it helps to improve well-being if you feel dizzy after anesthesia).

It will also be useful to spend time exercising in the pool and mastering various relaxation techniques.

Often found in elderly patients. After anesthesia, the nervous system experiences some difficulties in cleansing cells and restoring cognitive functions: memory temporarily deteriorates, and deviant behavior may occur. Fortunately, all these problems are temporary and gradually disappear (up to 2 weeks).

The causes of this kind of complications are associated both with the metabolic characteristics of the elderly and with the psychological trauma from the fact of the operation. An increased burden is also created by communicating with strangers in an unusual (frightening) environment.

During elective surgery in an elderly person, the severity of this complication can be reduced as follows:

• Try (if the disease allows) to lead an active lifestyle before surgery;
• If it is possible to carry out the manipulation under local anesthesia, do so;
• If you live with your family, try to agree with your doctor about returning home as quickly as possible after surgery;
• Check if you took the medications prescribed to you (for hypertension, for example), reading glasses and books (magazines, checkers, etc.) to the hospital;
• Do not drink alcohol before or after anesthesia.

Many patients experience severe tremors after emerging from anesthesia. This condition does not pose a danger to health, but it is quite annoying for the patient. Paroxysms of this kind last no more than half an hour. The type of anesthesia in this case does not matter - the reason is the cooling of the tissues during the operation (the individual characteristics of microcirculation, diabetes, and atherosclerosis in the patient play a role).

These are, in fact, not the consequences of the anesthesia itself, but mechanical damage during its administration. Teeth are damaged, on average, in two out of 100,000 patients (carious, as a rule). Before general anesthesia, it is advisable to treat caries and stomatitis.

The tongue and lips are slightly damaged in one out of 20 patients; you need to be mentally prepared for this. All defects disappear without a trace within a week after anesthesia.

The infection enters the lungs due to tracheal intubation, trauma and infection of the mucous membrane, or due to an unsterile tube. In addition, the cause may be either the patient’s atypical anatomy of the respiratory tract, or an existing chronic disease of the respiratory system (chronic bronchitis).

To reduce the risk of postoperative pneumonia, the following is recommended:

• We quit smoking one and a half months before the planned surgery;
• Bronchitis, tracheitis, laryngitis and sinusitis (if any) must be treated before endotracheal anesthesia;
• If it hurts to breathe after surgery, tell your doctor right away. Insufficiently active breathing increases the risk of infection, and hospital infection is the most “evil” one.

It happens extremely rarely and is eliminated by anesthesiologists almost instantly. This kind of situation occasionally occurs with drug addicts, as well as people who constantly take powerful analgesics (cancer patients, for example).

The brain, getting used to the effect on certain centers, in this case needs a higher dose of analgesic.

If (purely hypothetically) you constantly take sleeping pills, strong painkillers, or are dependent on any chemical substances, it is in your best interests to tell the anesthesiologist about this.

There are three types of this condition:

• The patient wakes up during surgery and tries to move. Doctors react instantly by increasing the dose of analgesic substances. The patient does not have time to really wake up or feel pain;
• The patient wakes up, does not feel pain, and cannot move. A rather surreal situation, but the patient does not experience any discomfort (except psychological);
• The patient wakes up, cannot move, and feels pain. In this case, serious mental trauma may remain.

It rarely develops, it can happen to anything. If you carefully study the instructions for any drug (not a dietary supplement), then there is definitely a complication - individual intolerance (allergic reactions to components, etc.). If such a situation develops during anesthesia (1 case in 15,000), the anesthesiologist copes with the situation in 95% of cases.

The remaining 5% of 0.00006% of patients die.