Anaesthesia for ear surgery

Anaesthesia for ear surgery requires knowledge of the relevant anat-omy and appreciation of the principal surgical requirements -a sta-tionary patient and dry operating field intraoperatively to facilitate surgery; and, smooth emergence from anaesthesia at the end of sur-gery, to minimize complications. To achieve the optimum patient outcome, the anaesthetist must modify their anaesthetic technique, tailoring it to the individual patient and the underlying pathology, including employing intraoperative strategies to safely manipulate the patient's blood pressure and preserve facial nerve function, tech-niques to attenuate airway reflexes at emergence, and utilizing a multi -modal approach to provision of analgesia and postoperative nausea and vomiting prophylaxis. Crucially, the anaesthetist must be aware that many surgical procedures involving the ear are undertaken to pre-serve, improve or restore hearing function, such that careful prepara-tion and meticulous perioperative care are essential in order to optimize outcome and to minimize complications.