How important is the type of anaesthesia on aneurysm repair?

thinking about anaesthesia with regards to your choice of type of aneurysm, open or endovascular, how important should the anaesthesia be? What you have to realise is that anaesthesia of any sort in this country is incredibly safe. If you want numbers, and I can tell you the chance of you dying directly a result of an anaesthetic is less than 1 in 200,000 and that compares with overall operative mortality in surgery across all specialities of around 1 in 100 to 1 in 200. So the anaesthetic itself should not be a primary consideration in determining the mode of surgery. It's really what that operation offers to you as a patient that should be your first concern. You can give you a general anaesthetic. General anaesthetics are incredibly safe. Local anaesthetics Epidural anesthetics are incredibly safe, and that is because we have developed systems of monitoring patients, which means we can keep a very, very close eye on the physiology of the patient. We can measure the amount of anesthetic that we give you. We can measure what is going on throughout. So if, when you are taking the decision about what sort of surgery you should have, yes, On very rare occasions, an anaesthetist will want to persuade you one way or the other, but for the substantial majority of patients, it is more important that they choose the surgical technique that is appropriate to their condition than worry too much about the anaesthetic. It's a lot safer than the surgery.