Why is morphine added to anesthetics?

Question

what i know is that it prevents shocks, but how????

Isn't it a CNS DEPRESSANT?!!!

Answer 1

morphine is wat knocks u out!!!! DUH!

Answer 2

It relieves pain and is a mental depressant, relaxing the patient.  It also depresses respiration, which is a good reason to use mechanical ventilation in anesthetized patients (another reason is that curariform muscle relaxants are often used, which paralyze the muscles of respiration).

DK

Answer 3

We use morphine sometimes, but not always.  I didn't use any opiate but fentanyl today in the three vascular cases that I did.  I prefer hydromorphone to morphine for most cases.

Morphine has nothing to do with "preventing shocks".  When we use it in anesthesia, it is for pain relief, which is an integral part of a balanced general anesthetic technique.

Morphine is never used to knock people out.  It would take way too much, and would likely lead to a bit more bradycardia than we'd like to see.  Morphine also releases histamine, which can mess things up.

It's also not usually used to suppress respiratory effort.  If there's trouble ventilating a patient, we use paralytic drugs.  If the patient is not paralyzed and starts to breathe over the ventilator, we just increase the respiratory rate, cause a little hypocapnia, and breathing stops.  

The reason for using morphine (or hydromorphone) is that it lasts beyond th anesthetic, to provide pain relief for a few hours after surgery.  People prefer waking up NOT in pain.  We do out best to get enough opiate into the patient to alleviate pain but not so much that s/he refuses to breathe.