MASH surgery revelation....

[blume357]

Watching some of the later MASH episodes on the Sundance channel and just noticed something.... about the operating room...

All the docs and nurses have to have mask on but the folks they are operating on don't... how does that work?

 

[GuyPike]

Anesthesia at the time may have been ether. Hard to administer when the patient is wearing a mask.

 

[opos]

A mask muffles the screaming

 

[vito]

The danger to the patient is that he/she will be infected by bacteria or other microorganisms from those in the operating room. The patient is already exposed to their own microorganisms. Plus the necessity for being able to administer whatever anesthesia was in use at the time. I know that in the 1940's, such as when I at 18 months old had a tonsillectomy in my doctor's office, my anesthesia (according to my mother who was present) was ether poured on a gauze pad and placed over my nose and mouth.

 

[powder smoke]

All the docs and nurses have to have mask on but the folks they are operating on don't... how does that work?

It's called TV. ps

 

[gasbag]

I am retired from hospital work.
I have spent 100's of hours in the OR.
I have never seen the patient with a mask on.
Kind of hard to get tubes and needed access with a mask in the way.
The only type of mask I have seen in surgery is a laryngeal mask airway (LMA).
Mask ventilation uses the patient's natural airway and is usually used for shorter
cases that do not put the patient at risk for aspiration.
But then again I have been retired for a few years so who knows..............

 

[rugerguy211]

The danger to the patient is that he/she will be infected by bacteria or other microorganisms from those in the operating room. The patient is already exposed to their own microorganisms. Plus the necessity for being able to administer whatever anesthesia was in use at the time. I know that in the 1940's, such as when I at 18 months old had a tonsillectomy in my doctor's office, my anesthesia (according to my mother who was present) was ether poured on a gauze pad and placed over my nose and mouth.

I had my tonsils removed on or about 1960 at age 7-ish. The ether and gauze pad was still in use.

 

[blackhawknj]

It's a TV program.

 

[kodiakken]

On MASH they used Curare and if they were out they used Ether!!! I seen that episode....

 

[Ka6otm]

I am retired from hospital work.
I have spent 100's of hours in the OR.
I have never seen the patient with a mask on.
Kind of hard to get tubes and needed access with a mask in the way.
The only type of mask I have seen in surgery is a laryngeal mask airway (LMA).
Mask ventilation uses the patient's natural airway and is usually used for shorter
cases that do not put the patient at risk for aspiration.
But then again I have been retired for a few years so who knows..............

Absolutely. Can't put in the ventilator tubes with a mask on and they won't do the operation without the ventilator.

My brother was an operating room technician for 5 years in the Navy and around 12 years afterwards in civilian hospitals and they don't put masks on patients.

 

[Mobuck]

When they cut the hole in my throat for the traech tube, the medico said "We're going to do this while you're awake but it won't hurt much more than the wound already hurts ".
Since then, I've been waiting for an opportunity to do a "field expedient" traech tube job so I can use that line.

 

[exavid]

...I know that in the 1940's, such as when I at 18 months old had a tonsillectomy in my doctor's office, my anesthesia (according to my mother who was present) was ether poured on a gauze pad and placed over my nose and mouth...

I was about four in 1946 when my dad was still in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theater. My mother and us three kids were staying at my grandmother's house. The local doctor came to the house carrying the famous 'doctor's bag' and did a tonsillectomy on me. I can still remember that mask smelling so strongly of ether. He did the job with me on my granmother's bed. Mainly because there was only one bedroom on the ground floor. I can still remember the taste of the throat lozenges he left for me and him telling my mother, "Now give him ice cream when he wants it for the next coupe of days". I would have had him take another set of tonsils out for that if I'd had any more.

 

[Colonel Daddy]

Yup, tonsils were removed in 1950. A piece of gauze was held over my face and Ether was poured onto it!

 

[blume357]

Speaking of MASH units.. war story my father told me... he landed at Inchon but had gotten pneumonia while floating around that week before.... a few weeks later his company sent him south to a MASH unit ... he walked and road south and found a MASH unit and while waiting to get checked in looked in on the operating room (open tent). He said there was a doctor digging around in the back of a guys head and the Doctor was smoking a cigarette and while doing the digging some of the ash fell in the guy's brain. My father gathered up his stuff and headed back to his company.....

 

[gramps]

I will bet, what your father saw was an autopsy. Unnerving anyway!
gramps

 

[toysoldier]

One of our orthopedic surgeons requires a mask on his total joint replacement patients, until the anesthetist replaces it with an O2 or anesthesia mask. A post-op infection in a total joint replacement is very, very bad, so he takes extra measures.

At the opposite end, for sinus surgery, tonsillectomies, and urological procedures, no one wears a mask.

 

[Colonialgirl]

Approaching 76 and I STILL got my tonsils; went though bouts of "Tonsillitis" and other sore throats, but they never got yanked !!