Comment by gniv
1 day ago
I will have surgery soon. If I ask the surgeon to allow me to listen to music during the surgery, will they allow it? I know it depends on hospital/surgeon/etc, but I'm wondering how much doctors are willing to deviate from protocol in general.
Depends on the surgery and how you want to listen.
Ask to have it played in the room? Sure. Want to listen on your own device? We don’t want to be responsible for loss or damage to that device. Want to use earbuds? Same problem if you’re going to be sedated at all, plus there is also the risk of damage to you if there’s metal anywhere.
One of the most commonly used instruments in surgery is electrocautery. A large pad is placed on (usually) a leg and is one electrode; the other is the instrument tip that does the burning. In theory, any metal in the current path could be a point for arcing. This is why you are asked to remove piercings (see your piercer for silicone plugs to fill the holes during surgeries). We don’t want to torch you.
I’m an anesthesiologist. Some of the risks we are guarding against are more theoretical than practical, but until the 1950’s all useful anesthetic gases were flammable and so protocols were focused on not setting the patients or the operating room on fire, and while we no longer have conductive floors and grounding chains around our waists, we do still worry about setting patients on fire (alcohol is still a common solvent for skin prep solutions). And we don’t want to lose or damage your stuff.
Thanks, that's useful. My procedure is supposed to be 2 hours, laparoscopic. I will ask but without getting my hopes up.
How often do patients request this? Do surgeons ever say no? I would think there's a risk of distraction here.
I have Spotify playlists for each of my regular surgeons. It’s just background music. I only know one who operates in silence.
Not the same but I wore ear buds and listened to music while having a tooth pulled, they didn’t mind.
I wore a VR headset during a "simple" outpatient surgery with local anesthetic. The anesthetic wore off halfway through. The VR headset did not help. I nearly passed out from the pain.
They’re meant to administer more local at that stage.
Yeah, there were some other, serious issues of lack of informed consent during that instance.
I had the option of a local or general anesthetic, but everyone acted like it was no big deal so I chose the local. I've had tooth cavities drilled without anesthesia and was expecting something like that. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced, where I've also experienced severe food poisoning. I almost threw up and almost passed out just from the pain.
When it happened, the doctor gaslit me and told me it was just in my head. In my follow-up appointment, he admitted it was a common occurrence in that procedure, but they didn't like to tell people about it because it might scare them away and they didn't stop to administer more anesthesia because "it's a quick procedure."
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