What is a safe weight to have surgery under general anesthetic?
The closer you are to your ideal weight, the better, however, we anesthetize everyone who needs it. Morbid obesity causes changes in the cardiac and respiratory systems that make anesthesia more risky (and almost always, make surgery more difficult, leading to longer anesthesia times and more invasive procedures). If you are morbidly obese, we are more likely to have a problem getting a breathing tube in, or a spinal or nerve block in, or additional IV’s if needed, or other things that might need doing. Positioning can also be a problem. Most OR tables handle up to 350 pounds, some go higher. If you’re overweight but not obese (and there are medical definitions for those terms) – no big deal. We can handle that, no problem.
