I heard of a case where someone died under anesthesia in a clinic. My question is if any procedure requires general anesthesia how do I ensure that the anesthesiologist actually knows what he’s doing? How is it even possible for someone to administer general anesthesia in a clinic? From my understanding it’s literally taking you to death’s door, and if they screw around you die.
I assume this is the story in question.
Yea
More than what it says in the article? I don’t think there’s much more a patient could do.
I have always taken for granted that there was a risk whenever I had to have surgery and that if I did not wake up, well, that was it…
Anyway I would not be there to complain or regret anything anymore.
For cosmetic surgery.
If you’re looking for another fear: Even the dentist can accidentally kill you if they mess up the injection of the local anesthesia 
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There’s also the possibility of dealing with a medical serial killer. It could happen.
I guess it’s more like what are the standards here regarding anesthesia, and whether getting it done at clinics are safe.
Here’s some data from about a decade ago. Back then, the death rate was 2.5/10,000 which was higher than Japan (1/10,000) and the US (.5-1/10,000). Seems pretty low to me but I wouldn’t do it outside a hospital and only if necessary.
Not sure if this is the story OP was referring to, but this was quite recent and shocking…
OB-GYN clinic performed surgery, cut somewhere they weren’t supposed to, patient ending up bleeding out to death.
I remember having a doctor as a neighbor. Long time ago, and he said in Taiwan malpractice is handled criminally, not civil like the states.
I got one here and I can say that they followed a protocol that looked the same as the country I come from:
I had to fill a questionnaire and talked to an (the?) anaesthesiologist before my procedure.
ya don’t. I had a procedure once (at one of the top hospitals in Taipei) and they asked me how much I weighed just before I went under. No meeting beforehand. It hadnt even occurred to me why they were asking my weight (it was to make sure they gave me the right dose). Then they cracked a bunch of jokes at each other about how it’s a good thing she (me) knows Chinese because the only English they (the doctors) know is “see dee EE F-U” and I was out. Needless to say, I was not impressed. For all the “Taiwan has the best healthcare in the world”, I came away from that experience thinking it’s a miracle people aren’t dying from malpractice regularly.
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They should probably have asked beforehand as a matter of routine, true, but I don’t think weight is absolutely critical info here because there are so many other factors that affect it too, like the individual’s unique responses to the various drugs and interactions with any other medications they’re taking.
That’s the reason they need an anesthesiologist there at all, because the dose anyway needs to be carefully titrated to how the patient is responding at the time, before and throughout the procedure. Even in Taiwan, I’m sure they’re quite competent at ballparking a person’s weight and selecting an appropriate starting dose, and there are going to be situations too where they don’t know the person’s weight and still manage to maintain an appropriate depth of anesthesia (e.g., emergency and trauma surgeries).
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People die all the time under GA. It’s not always malpractice. One in two hundred chance if you have any number of a range of pre-existing conditions including hypertension.
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You can always toughen up and refuse any anesthetic, if you’re that concerned. I do with dental work. Had a wisdom tooth pulled the hard way.
Not even local anesthetic? That’s brutal. 
I’ve never understood how laughing gas worked as a dental anesthetic in the good old days. I’ve tried it a couple of times recreationally (outside Taiwan, because it’s illegal here), and although I found it a fairly entertaining experience it didn’t seem “strong” enough to be able to take the edge off dental work… I guess there just weren’t many alternatives when this was common.
Upper tooth, of course. The pain was minimal, more like discomfort.