General Anaesthetic side effects days later

[Anxiouspatient]

I had to have three surgeries within one week. 2 were GA & 1 was local. It’s been two days since the last GA surgery and I’ve been really dizzy and light headed all day. I’ve also lost some feeling in one of my legs, although it hasn’t impacted being able to walk. Is this normal? Should I get myself checked out? I know I’ve had a lot of trauma to my body recently but I really don’t feel quite right.

What were the surgeries OP, as this could be part of the reason for feeling rubbish

if you’re worried you should speak to a real life HCP. Most of the answers will depend on what operations you had, was the ‘local’ anaesthetic local infiltration or regional/neuraxial anaesthetic/was it on your leg, etc. It can be normal to feel wiped out after surgeries, but there’s not enough info here to know if that’s all it is or whether there’s something that needs re-assessing. You need more info to know if the numb patch would be something to be expected or not.

It takes me a few days to feel normal. Hope you feel better soon.

Thank you. I had a tumour removed from my face. I then developed 2 hematoma clots. The first was taken out with local anaesthetic and second was the full GA. None had anything to do with my legs. I do have a lot of saliva fluid around the operation area so this could be causing me to feel dizzy but can’t explain the leg thing.

I really hope you went to the hospital OP

I was told that a GA can have effects days later but you sound like a complicated patient (thats what I always get called!) because there are several layers to what you've had done.

Are you being reviewed in some way or are they just finished with you now?

Anaesthetist. The GA side effects will be gone 2 days later and will have nothing to do with your leg. Light headed/dizzy could fit with anaemia which is quite possible if you've had a lot of bleeding. Get in touch with your surgeons/gp/walk in centre x

I went to A&E and had some scans, they didn’t find anything of concern. I still don’t feel right but I need to look at other explanations I think.

The trouble is, you will get different advice from different people. I was told very clearly by different anesthetists in different settings along with nurses as well in different settings (for different operations) that GA can have an effect on you physically and emotionally for several days after an operation.

Yet a poster above is fairly concrete about there being no effects after 2 days.

Not that there's no effect. That it isn't going to cause leg symptoms (you can sometimes get it from some procedures where we need the legs elevated in stirrups etc or surgery where we use nerve blocks to numb the leg for paun relief) but not face surgery as they be laying totally flat on the bed.

GA effects (the drugs themselves) last 24-48h hence that's the driving ban
Direct GA longer term things -
Longer term things so common in children they can get delirium so acutely confused and distressed, they can often have behavioural changes (poor sleep, acting up, bed wetting) isn't uncommon for up to a month post op. Over 65s also have the risk of post op cognitive dysfunction typically short lasting for weeks - can be long term/permanent

When we say "the anaesthetic" I'm talking the anaesthetic drugs we give... they have short half lives and won't be there.

The physiological hit/response to surgery lasts weeks to months depending on what operation it is and what was done... this is what we describe as "running a marathon" ... if you have half your bowels removed, tubes for feeding, gut delay blah blah blah then of course you aren't going to be "normal" at 48h... but that's the whole surgical insult that causes that, its not the anaesthetic... but we are often blasé about our phasing... but typically face surgery unless like major head and neck cancers/reconstructions etc is deemed superficial/surface surgery which triggers little in the way of surgical stress response

Hope that makes more sense in how both statements are true