Is Nine Hours Under General Anesthesia Too Long?

Few would argue that your cosmetic surgery should not be life threatening.  Generally anesthesia is associated with a finite risk of death.  What is this risk?  It depends on one's overall state of health and the relative risk of the procedure being performed.  For a facelift, the risk of dying from having a general anesthesia is approximately one in 50,000 depending on the study.  Recognize that studies the provide these estimates are very imprecise.  Surgeries that go beyond 6 hours are associated with increased risks.  How do ethical surgeons deal with this risk: we limit how much work we do at any given operative session.  Rather than having one massive surgery-the Blue Plate Special, it is far safer to have two or three smaller surgeries.  This achieves several things.  First your cosmetic surgery does not push the bounds of survivability.  Secondly how fresh do you think your surgeon will be at the start of the 8th hour of surgery?  Finally, by having staged surgery, you can ease into your new look.  Please do not be seduced by the promise of cost savings by having everything done at one time.  I do also very much agree that additional opinions are warranted.

Dear philsfan,

   In my practice I limit  surgeries to 6 hours. That is because , statisticaly , the complication rate increase significantly after 6 hours. Cosmetic surgery is purely elective and comlications should be reduced to a minimum. I would recommend to you to split the procedures into 2 separate times. You have to remember that doctors are humans too and after 6 hours they can get tired and less focused and the quality of work might not be the same. It might be inconvenient to have two separate procedure but safety and quality of work are more important. There were at least 2 celebrity cases lately that had very bad outcome after having very long surgeries. Play it safe and smart.

                        Good luck,

                                                 Dr Widder