Having surgery or an invasive procedure that requires anesthesia is a significant event in anyone’s life. Our primary concerns are your care, safety, and comfort before, during, and after your procedure.
All our faculty physicians are board-certified anesthesiologists, and many of them have completed fellowship training in subspecialties including cardiac, pediatric, and obstetric anesthesia, intensive care, and pain medicine.
Our faculty physicians evaluate, monitor, and supervise every patient’s anesthesia care throughout each procedure, and continue to make sure patients are comfortable and safe during the immediate recovery period. They have the specific medical education to make critical decisions should an emergency arise, or if a routine procedure becomes complicated.
UCLA is a teaching institution, and our faculty physicians routinely supervise anesthesiology residents and fellows who are receiving specialty training. They may also work in a care team model with certified registered nurse anesthetists. In every case, a board-certified physician anesthesiologist is immediately available.
In this section, you will find information about choices for anesthesia, preparing for anesthesia and surgery, and the answers to other frequently asked questions.
In the present age, there is no lack of available information on the Internet, but accurate, reliable information may be harder to find. Much of the publicly accessible information on the web suffers from one or more of these critical flaws:
You may find accurate, unbiased information in these Internet locations:
Online message boards and forum discussions may be a valuable source of support for patients and families who are facing many different medical problems. However, advice offered in these Internet groups should always be discussed with your physicians, who can help you with the decision of what treatment or type of anesthesia is best for you or your family member.
UCLA Health accepts Medicare assignment and private indemnity insurance, including a wide variety of HMO and PPO plans. We participate in over 100 local and national managed-care networks. For more information, please see the UCLA Health Plans information web page.