Anaesthesia | Obstetrics | Breastfeeding and Anaesthesia

Breastfeeding and Anaesthesia
Session Overview
Description
This sessionprovides information for an anaesthetist to give to mothers about the benefits of breastfeeding, and the safety of drugs commonly prescribed in the perioperative period.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• List some of the benefits of breastfeeding
• Describe how drugs in general, and anaesthetic agents in particular, pass into breast milk
• Describe a variety of practical ways for the anaesthetist and the mother to reduce drug exposure
• Recognize the effects of specific anaesthetic and analgesic drugs on milk production and the feeding infant

One of the questions most commonly asked of healthcare professionals by nursing mothers concerns the effects and safety of drugs used in the peri-operative period on the breastfeeding infant.

This session will help you understand the way anaesthetic and analgesic drugs are excreted in the breast milk and the factors that affect their safety. You will also learn about ways that infant drug exposure through breast milk can be minimized and so reduce the need for breastfeeding to be discontinued.