Is brain surgery dangerous?
Patients having brain surgery are under anesthesia, sometimes for very long periods of time. Anesthetics almost all reduce blood pressure. If we try to keep the blood pressure on the high side, it increases cerebral blood flow and makes the brain swell. So we have to keep a very tight control on the BP to keep enough blood flowing to keep the heart, kidneys and brain perfused, but not so high that the brain swells up. Most craniotomies are serious enough that we start a bunch of invasive lines, and maybe a lumbar drain to take off CSF. Many of those patients go directly to an ICU after surgery and spend a day or two on a ventilator. It’s a big deal. You see the brain as isolated? It’s involved with every other physiologic function. Brain surgery is complicated, and the anesthesia that goes with it has a lot of special considerations that I don’t have the time or energy to go into now. Big books are written on it. Please don’t think that any medical drama has any basis in reality. They’
