AVERTIN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3371, 29 September 1931, Page 2

AVERTIN

NEW ANAESTHETIC. OPERATIONS NO LONGER INSPIRE TERROR.

How avertin, the anaesthetic from Germany, is used was described by a London authority to the Sunday Dispatch. "Its principal virtue- is the gentleness with which it prepares a patient for an operation, and the slow thorough way in which it allows him to recover afterwards," he said. "In many cases it is not until after two days that a patient realises he has undergone an operation! The patient is weighed, and the dose is made up strictly in accordance with the weight. Half an hour before the operation the drug is administered, and the patient gradually falls asleep. The operation is then performed, and the patient sleeps on blissfully for at least another twelve hours. He awakens slowly, and it takes two or perhaps three days for him to become really awake. During the important period after the operation, when his progress might otherwise be seriously retarded, by the thoughts of what has been happening to him, he is sleeping like a child."

The anaesthetic has been the subject of intensive research and experiment in the laboratories of Germany for the last few years, and one prominent London hospital has been using it for six months. Avertin's existence was only made known to the general public recently when at a Reading inquest it was revealed that the drug had been used in a case of tetanus. "It is a wonderful anaesthetic for nervous people," said a well-known London specialist. "Those who have had operations performed on them with avertin as the medium are going about extolling it for all they are woi"th."

Only anaesthetists who have made a thorough study of the drug at are present allowed to use it.