“Can you get anesthesia if you have heart problems?”
I am a 38 year old male. I wonder if you can get anesthesia if you have heart problems?
5 Answers
The nature of your heart disease is important. For example, a coronary event requires a 6-month window before elective surgery.
Whether you can have anesthesia depends on the kind and severity of the heart problem you have. Some problems like a minor heart murmur do not pose a risk, but others like congestive heart failure or some arrythmias increase risk. If you have heart problems you should have an evaluation by the anesthesia team to assess your risk for anesthesia.
Theoretically, you can. Of course, it also depends on the type of heart disease, its acuity, and degree of severity. Depending also on the type of surgery that you need to have, you may need to have a cardiac anesthesiologist to administer you the anesthetic. There are a lot of ifs, and it all depends, as I said, on your co-existing cardiac disease and its severity, especially as you are only 38 yrs old.
This is a difficult question to answer because there are many different “heart problems” and many different types of anesthesia depending on the surgery, your other health problems, etc. Generally speaking anesthesia can be safely administered as long as it is modified appropriately to accommodate the patient’s health problems and the surgery being performed.
Cardiac patients can go through anesthesia with precautions and in the hands of a cardiac anesthesiologist.
