Anaesthesia for awake breast surgery

Abstract

Worldwide, breast cancer is the most common cancer amongst women. In the UK, breast cancer is the fourth commonest cause of death from cancer in females, and more than 80% of patients diagnosed with breast cancer will undergo surgery as part of their treatment. In most cases, surgery is performed under general anaesthesia (GA), often supplemented by regional anaesthesia (RA) for postoperative analgesia. However, for a variety of reasons, an increasing number of patients have breast surgery awake under RA with or without sedation.