While surgery is relatively safe, especially compared to historical medical treatment, the Wall Street Journal has put out an article on potential complications from anesthesia as a follow-up to anesthesia-related questions surrounding Joan Rivers' death.
The article includes a guide on types of sedation, as well as statistics on anesthesia and a patient checklist on what to ask providers before "going under." The checklist is from the American Society for Anesthesiologists.
"Thanks to advances in safety over the last few decades, deaths linked to anesthesia are fairly rare. But with no system for gathering national data, complications have flown under the radar and are only beginning to be tracked," according to the report.
More articles on anesthesia:
4 strategies to reduce ASC anesthesia complications