Preparing for a Painless Surgery: Medication or Meditation?

Abstract

Having been trained by Dr. Mario Marzola of Australia at the beginning of my transplantation career, I adopted his routine of IV sedation using midazolam and fentenyl before local anesthesia. Subsequently, if patients do feel the pain of injection at the time, they do not remember it as a result of the amnesic effect of the midazolam. Dr. Marzola always said “Don’t hurt the patients or they won’t come back,” and in the early days of my practice all the patients were transplanted under heavy sedation.