I am about to have brain surgery that may require this procedure...
Neuroanesthesia is a field of anesthesiology which focuses on neurosurgery. Anesthesia is not used during the middle of an "awake" brain surgery. Awake brain surgery is where the patient is conscious for the middle of the procedure and sedated for the beginning and end. This procedure is used when the tumor does not have clear boundaries and the surgeon wants to know if they are invading on critical regions of the brain which involve functions like talking, cognition, vision, and hearing. It will also be conducted for procedures which the surgeon is trying to combat epileptic seizures.
Early forms of neuroanesthesia were found during procedures of trepanning in Southern America, like Peru. In these procedures coca leaves and datura plants were used to manage pain as the person had dull primitive tools cut open their skull. In 400 BC The physician Hippocrates made accounts of using different wines to sedate patients while trepanning. In 60 AD Dioscorides, a physician, pharmacologist, and botanist, detailed how mandrake, henbane, opium, and alcohol were used to put patients to sleep during trepanning. In 972 AD two brother surgeons, in modern-day India, used "samohine" to sedate a patient while removing a small tumor and awoke the patient by pouring onion and vinegar in the patients mouth. Since then, multiple cocktails have been derived in order to sedate a patient during a brain surgery. The most recent form of neuroanesthesia is the combination of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and nitrogen. This was discovered in the 18th century by Sir Humphry Davy and brought into the operating room by Sir Astley Cooper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosurgery
On Wednesday November 23, 2016 I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. It is scheduled to be removed Dec. 14th.