Anesthesia in head and neck surgery. Head and neck cancer surgery and maxillo facialtrauma

Major ablative and reconstructive head and neck cancer surgery requires many specialized anesthetic techniques, which are the shared responsibility of the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. Patients who have head and neck cancers are beset by a multitude of medical problems. The same etiologic factors that helped cause the head and neck malignancies in these patients are also responsible for multiple organ/system diseases, which render these patients an increased anesthetic risk. Despite these factors, it has been shown that the elderly can undergo major head and neck surgery with a mortality rate less than 4 per cent.