If you or someone you love has a procedure coming up, you probably have questions. Who will be in the room? What will anesthesia feel like? What questions should you ask before the day arrives?
The California Society of Anesthesiologists represents the physician anesthesiologists who care for patients across the state before, during, and after surgery. We built this page so you can walk into your procedure feeling confident and informed.
Below you will find trusted resources on preparing for anesthesia, questions worth asking your care team, and what to expect in specific situations like childbirth, heart surgery, and pediatric care.
Additional Resources
Understanding your anesthesia care
Your anesthesia care team
Anesthesiologists are physicians who complete four years of medical school plus four years of residency training. Learn who does what in the operating room.
→ Video: The Anesthesia Care Team
Education and training
A plain-language look at the training behind the physician leading your anesthesia care.
→ PDF: Education and Training Can Mean the Difference Between Life and Death
Made for This Moment
ASA’s patient education hub, with condition-specific guides, videos, and answers to common questions.
→ Link: Made for This Moment
Preparing for a procedure requiring anesthesia
Questions to ask before anesthesia
Practical questions to bring to your pre-op conversation, from confirming who will lead your anesthesia care to understanding your actual risk.
→ Article: 10 Questions to Ask Before Anesthesia
Preparing for your procedure
Steps to take beforehand and questions worth asking, whether the surgery is for you or your child, and whether it happens in a hospital, surgery center, or doctor’s office.
→ ASA: How to Prepare
Office-based procedures checklist
Having a procedure outside a hospital or surgery center? Know what to ask first.
→ PDF: Patient’s Checklist for Office-Based Procedures
For older adults and their families
Anesthesia affects older patients differently. What to discuss beforehand, and how to support a smoother recovery
→ ASA: Brain Health Initiative – Key Questions to Ask Your Physicians
Childbirth and delivery
Epidurals during labor and delivery
What an epidural actually does, how quickly it works, and straight answers to the common myths about whether it slows labor or leads to a C-section.
→ ASA: Epidurals
Pain relief options during labor
A look at every option, from epidurals and spinal blocks to IV medications, and the questions worth raising with your team beforehand.
→ ASA: Labor Pain
Cesarean delivery
Why a spinal or epidural is usually preferred for a C-section, what the procedure involves, and how to plan your recovery.
→ ASA: C-Section
Children and surgery
What parents should know before their child has surgery
How to prepare your child, what happens on surgery day, and what to ask the pediatric anesthesiologist.
→ PDF: Pediatrics for Parents
Heart surgery
Anesthesia for heart and other major surgery
What to expect from anesthesia during specific operations, and how the procedure shapes your recovery and pain management.
→ ASA: Heart Surgery
→ ASA: Surgical Procedures
Living with chronic pain
Understanding chronic pain
What separates chronic pain from temporary pain, and how physicians who specialize in pain medicine approach treating it.
→ ASA: Chronic Pain
Non-opioid treatment options
Over-the-counter and prescription alternatives to opioids, plus non-drug approaches like physical therapy and acupuncture, used alone or in combination.
→ ASA: Non-Opioid Treatment
Understanding anesthesia risks
How safe is anesthesia
Anesthesia is safer than it has ever been, and there are specific things you can do to lower your own risk, starting with meeting your anesthesiologist beforehand.
→ ASA: Anesthesia Risks
Waking up during surgery
Anesthesia awareness is rare, affecting roughly one or two of every 1,000 procedures under general anesthesia. Learn what it actually involves, why it happens, and how your anesthesiologist works to prevent it.
→ ASA: Anesthesia Awareness
Educación pública: La anestesia y usted…
(Se reimprime con la autorización de: Sociedad Texas de Anestesiólogos y Sociedad Americana de Anestesiólogos)
In addition, the CSA has obtained permission from the Texas Society of Anesthesiologists and the ASA to reprint several of the patient education papers that have been prepared in Spanish. You may access these papers below.