Difference between anesthesia and tranquilizers/sedatives?

What is the difference between anesthesia and tranquilizers/sedatives? The anesthesia used for general anesthesia in surgeries completely puts a person out cold, where on earth as a tranquilizer/sedative is more so to relax a person? Am I right?

Are the same chemicals used in respectively, or are they different?

How exactly do they work?
Answers:
Anesthesia uses a sedative plus a paralytic. The sedative knocks you out so you don't perceive anything and the paralytic makes you immobile. If you only had the dart, you could still move on the operating table theoretically....not necessarily a good entry. If you only had the paralytic you couldn't move anything but would still be awake and able to discern pain.
Well a tranquilizer and soporific are the same thing. Typically drugs are often call sedative/hypnotics due to their ability to cause sedation and induce sleep. The primary sedative/hypnotics in use are benzodiazepines resembling Valium (diazepam), Xanax (alprazolam), Ativan (lorazepam), Rivotril/Klonopin (clonazepam), Restoril (temazepam), Versed/Hypnovel (midazolam). These drugs are often given for anxiety and/or insomnia. Several are also used to sedate patients before procedures.

Anesthesia is not only one drug.

There are four main drugs

1) Sedatives- these are used to make a person sleep, relax their body (not freshly feeling relaxed but physically relaxed). Examples of drugs commonly used during anesthesia are midazolam, propofol, sodium thiopental (a barbiturate). These drugs can also cause amnesia of the surgery so a patient might not even remember getting to the OR. They are habitually what 'knock you out.'

2) Analgesics (opiate pain medications) are used to create analgesia.
Usually this is done with the drug Fentanyl.

3) Inhaled anesthetics are typically used to cause fast sedation and then anesthesia. But IV midazolam, propofol, sodium thiopental work very quickly.

4) muscle relaxants (paralytics). Suxamethonium is a greatly powerful and often used during intubation. If you ever watch a medical show you might hear 'sux,' referring to Suxamethonium. Other drugs (non-depolarizing muscle relaxants) are often used during surgery.

But tons of the sedatives used in surgery are taken for anxiety. You will not see propofol or thiopental at your local pharmacy. But Valium and Ativan are used. Fentanyl is used for pain control by several people. But the surgical muscle relaxants are really just for those situations.

Basically sedation is being asleep and appease anesthesia is "complete sensory derivation" Source(s): I am a medical student with a specialist degree (Hons. BSc) in Pharmacology beside a focus on psychopharmacology. I have interned under two psychiatrists and one neurologist. In addition I hold worked as a pharmacy assistant.
Anesthesia is a state. Tranquility is another state. Tranquilisers/sedatives are drugs which may be used in achieving either state, by varying the dose. However, anesthesia is much more complex than newly "putting out cold". There are 3 fundamental components of a general anesthetic: sleep, relief of pain, and muscle relaxation, and it is the skill of the anesthetist to contest the amount of each component to the particular needs of respectively patient and each operation. The sedatives can be used for the sleepy bit, but within are several other drugs, including the inhaled anesthetics, which do the same job. The sedatives, though human being said to make patients relax, do not do the job of a proper muscle relaxant, nor do they do anything to relieve pain.
The works of action of the anesthetics is one of those ongoing questions, but the most popular theory is that they wreak a degree of swelling of the brain cell wall which obstructs the normal lane of electrolytes in and out of the cell, thereby preventing nerve impulses from human being generated. As for the sedatives, the most common are of the benzodiazepine group (including diazepam, Valium), and at hand is actually a specific receptor in the brain for these. Why, I have no notion, as there are no benzodiazepines normally circulating in the body. Source(s): Retired anesthetist

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