We watch Trauma shows enough that we asked- why don’t they at least give patients nitrous oxide to dull the pain and calm some hysterical patients. We’ve seen it admin only once on a Rescue show. Surely a slow dose of this isn’t gonna be fatal to a broken arm patient. I insist on it when i visit my dentist. I can’t stand the drilling sound and it does kind of numb the brain pain.
Pass the Cool-Whip Please!
Laughing gas nitrous oxide is N2O. And N2O has some harmful side effects.
They generally give you a mild sedative when they set your broken arm in the hospital emergency room. Nitrous requires the services of a full-fledged anesthesiologist to administer it, whereas any nurse can give you the sedative shot.
Even if you have an anesthesiologist on duty in the hospital ER, you don’t render a hospital emergency room trauma patient unconscious if you can help it because (a) you have no way of knowing how full his stomach is, and he could vomit and aspirate it (anesthesia sometimes makes people vomit), and (b) you still need to get information from him if possible–name, next of kin, any pre-existing conditions like diabetes or pacemakers.
You need your trauma patient to be as conscious and functioning as possible, and sending him to Sleepy-Bye Land with a shot of Nitrous would be counter-productive.
Nitrous is an anesthesia, remember. Its whole purpose is to knock the patient out. Even only 20% nitrous equals the effects of a shot of morphine. And people who have been sedated with morphine are in no condition to tell the doctor their name, rank, serial number, etc.
http://medlib.med.utah.edu/kw/derm/pages/ni05_4.htm
Also, one of the side effects of nitrous can be that it may induce miscarriage, and if your trauma patient is pregnant…
http://medlib.med.utah.edu/kw/derm/pages/ni05_10.htm