I have a question for those who have had general anesthesia. I am 38 years old, in good general health, and had my vaginal hysterectomy on Feb 12th. I've had 5 other surgeries - 2 shoulder, 2 knee, and 1 brain surgery - and have never had any problems with anesthesia.
Normally the very first thing you say when you wake up from surgery is "I'm in pain". The first thing I said was, "why is my heart beating so fast?" I looked over at the monitor and it was at 159. All I was doing was laying there! The nurse said she didn't know what was going on with my heart but they she was giving me something in the IV to help lower it. About 20 minutes later when they put me in the recovery room, it was down to about 136. It stayed at that rate for almost 2 hours. At that point, they gave me an extended release beta blocker and that ended up bringing my heart rate down to about 115, as long as I didn't move a muscle. If I moved at all, even just moving a toe around, it would shoot up to the 130's. It was very sensitive for some reason.
My O2 levels were down to about 82% and my BP was going up. The nurse said she was a little concerned so they had ICU come in and hook me up to remote monitors. My heart, O2 and BP were monitored by ICU all night as I slept. The next morning, everything was back down to normal, normal heart rate, O2 in the upper 90's and BP was nice and low.
I never got any explanation of why that happened. The doctor just shrugged his shoulders and said it was weird, but that he had no clue why my body had reacted that way. It really made me nervous when it was happening. I felt like I was trapped in my body was a speeding heart and had no way to get out or slow it down. I tried to stay calm because getting scared would make it worse. It concerned them enough to have me monitored from ICU as I slept, just in case.
My first question is, has this ever happened to any of you? Have you ever had tachycardia (racing heart rate) for a period of time right after you woke up from surgery? For me, the tachy lasted almost 12 hours. I have had 5 prior surgeries and never once have I had a problem with post-op tachycardia. The brain surgery I had 6 months ago was a major surgery. The operation lasted 6 hours and I spent 4 or 5 days in the hospital. It was a very hard recovery on my body because I had severe spinning vertigo, constant vomiting, and a lot of pain, yet my heart and BP were just fine the whole time. I have had issues with tachycardia and heart irregularities (skipping beats, flutters, etc) in the past but never with a surgery.
I'm wondering if its possible that the type of anesthesia used could caused tachycardia or heart issues in some people. Is there a way to find out what kind of general anesthesia was used? Could I just call my surgeon and ask him? Or would the hospital maybe know? The thought of ever needing to have surgery again in the future now scares me so I want to try and figure out what the problem was and how to avoid it in the future. Thanks for listening
General anesthesia and tachycardia?
