If you have obesity, anesthesia can be more challenging, but your team can plan for it. Extra weight can make it harder to find veins, choose the right medicine dose, keep your oxygen level up, place a breathing tube, and recover from anesthesia. It can also raise the chance of breathing problems, especially if you have sleep apnea, which means you briefly stop breathing during sleep. Obesity is also linked with heart, blood pressure, reflux, and other health problems that can add risk during surgery.

Before surgery, your anesthesiologist will review your health history and medicines and do an airway exam, which is a check of how easy it may be to manage your breathing. People with obesity may need special positioning, extra oxygen before going to sleep, and sometimes different tools or monitoring. In some cases, a breathing tube is used, and some patients may need more careful blood pressure monitoring or ultrasound help for IV access.

You can help by telling the team if you snore, feel very tired in the day, or think you may have sleep apnea. If you use cannabis or GLP-1 weight loss or diabetes drugs, make sure the anesthesiologist knows before surgery. Verify the exact plan with your surgical or anesthesia team in case they want something different for you.