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General anaesthesia or general anesthesia is a medically induced coma with loss of protective reflexes, resulting from the administration of either intravenous or inhalational general anaesthetic medications, often in combination with an analgesic and neuromuscular blocking agent. It is generally performed in an operating theater to allow surgical procedures that would otherwise be intolerably painful for a patient, or in an intensive care unit or emergency department to facilitate endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients.
A variety of drugs may be administered, with the overall aim of ensuring unconsciousness, amnesia, analgesia, loss of reflexes of the autonomic nervous system, and in some cases paralysis of skeletal muscles. The optimal combination of drugs for any given patient and procedure is typically selected by an anaesthetist, or another provider such as a nurse anaesthetist , in consultation with the patient and the surgeon, dentist, or other practitioner performing the operative procedure.