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In reply to the discussion: Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? [View all]DebJ
(7,699 posts)"While natural sleep normally cycles through a predictable series of phases, general anesthesia involves the patient being taken to and maintained at the phase most appropriate for the procedure, and the phases of general anesthesia at which surgery is performed are most similar to states of coma. "People have hesitated to compare general anesthesia to coma because the term sounds so harsh, but it really has to be that profound or how could you operate on someone?" Brown explains. "The key difference is this is a coma that is controlled by the anesthesiologist and from which patients will quickly and safely recover." "
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20101230/General-anesthesias-similarities-with-and-differences-from-sleep-and-coma.aspx
There are many ways to try to help this family member sleep, but using drugs like Ambien or anesthetics isnt the answer to a reoccuring problem.