No, patients generally don't urinate during surgery because anesthesia affects bladder control, but a urinary catheter is often inserted beforehand to drain urine, preventing bladder distension and keeping the area clear for the operation. While under anesthesia, the bladder muscles relax, and the urge to urinate is suppressed, so a tube (catheter) manages urine output until the patient wakes up and can use the bathroom themselves.
General anesthesia can paralyze your bladder muscles, making it hard to urinate and affecting your ability to recognize the need. Many surgeries use a Foley catheter, a tube that drains urine from the bladder.
Urinary catheters are often used during surgery, as you can't control your bladder while under anesthesia.
A suprapubic catheter is a type of indwelling catheter. It's inserted through a hole in your abdomen and then directly into your bladder. This procedure can be carried out under general anaesthetic, epidural anaesthetic or local anaesthetic. A suprapubic catheter is used when the urethra is damaged or blocked.
Helping Your Bladder Empty
During your surgery, a catheter will be used to collect your urine. If you have trouble urinating after your catheter is removed, relax and do not strain. The goal is to trigger the bladder to contract, not to bear down and hold your breath.
The medical name for the procedure is cytoreductive surgery (CRS) with heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) or CRS/HIPEC.
Robert Liston's most notorious surgery yielded 300% mortality. The patient, the surgical assistant, and a family member bystander, each of whom felt the blade of Dr. Liston's slashing amputation knife, died of gangrene in the days following.
Disc surgeries of the spine have a failure rate greater than 50%. 10% of patients experience a worsening of symptoms after surgical intervention.
In most cases, you only wear your underwear underneath your gown when you have a surgical procedure. When you arrive at the hospital or outpatient facility, your nurse will tell you what clothes you can keep on under your gown, depending on your surgical site.
What are the rules? In general, newborn babies need to be changed every 2-3 hours. With poopy diapers, it's pretty straightforward.
Surgeons discussed on Twitter the coping mechanisms they have developed. On heavy days, they double up with a tampon and pad, or a pad or tampon and period underwear. Some take tranexamic acid to reduce bleeding and use frequent doses of painkillers.
The "21-second pee rule" comes from a scientific discovery that most mammals over about 3 kg (like dogs, cows, elephants) empty their bladders in roughly 21 seconds, regardless of their size, due to physics involving urethra length and gravity. For humans, this serves as a loose benchmark: urinating significantly faster (e.g., under 10 seconds) or slower (over 30 seconds) might signal holding it too long or an overactive bladder, though it's not an exact diagnosis.
The duration of constipation after surgery varies from person to person. For some, bowel movements may return to normal within a few days. For others, especially those taking opioid pain medications, it can last longer, sometimes for a week or more.
Anesthesia awareness happens when you become conscious or “wake up” during surgery under general anesthesia. It's rare, occurring in one or two out of every 1,000 cases.
Enter Robert Liston — one of the fastest surgeons in history. He could perform an amputation in under 30 seconds. ⏱️ His famous line to students holding stopwatches: “Time me, gentlemen, time me!”
Spinal surgery, knee replacement, and other major orthopedic procedures are often cited as the "worst" surgeries to recover from due to severe pain and lengthy rehab. Recovering from major surgeries can be very tough and painful. At Liv Hospital, we know how hard these procedures can be on patients.
Historical context: the 103‑Hour surgical marathon
Against this backdrop, the 2001 Singapore case broke precedent, lasting an unprecedented 103 hours over four continuous days. The twins were just 1 year and 17 days old when the operation began on April 6, 2001, at Singapore General Hospital.
HIPEC surgery is a complex procedure. It usually requires eight to 10 hours in the operating room.
Beth Henderson considers that Edward Levine, MD, has saved her life not once but twice. The first involved the “mother of all surgeries,” as she calls it, to address her appendix cancer. The second was a life-threatening blood clot in her lung.
During HIPEC, chemotherapy medicine is warmed to around 106 to 109 degrees Fahrenheit (41 to 43 degrees Celsius). This is why HIPEC is often referred to as a "chemo wash" or "hot chemo bath." Heating chemotherapy medicine can help it penetrate into tissues and enhance the medicine's effectiveness.
If it's longer in three or four hours we usually put in a catheter to monitor you and prevent this from happening. Number two it's extremely rare but if it does happen it's no big deal. We call it a code brown in the industry and if you think about it we're in an environment where we're ready for any sort of mess.
The bladder never empties completely so some residue is normal. You may find it difficult to start to pass water and even when you have started, the flow is weak and slow. You might find you dribble after you have finished passing water. Perhaps you dribble urine all the time, even without noticing.
The most difficult surgical procedures are often characterized by their complexity and high-risk nature. Surgeries such as thoracic aortic dissection repair are considered highly challenging. The technical expertise required for these surgeries is exceptionally high.