In the early days of anesthesia and surgery, dying "under the knife" was a real concern. Today, there are roughly 25,000,000 anesthetics performed each year in the United States, and death rates vary from about 30 to 960 per year. Although these numbers are small, they also include anesthetics performed for trauma and emergency surgery when the risk is higher. Elective surgery, therefore, carries a lower risk. This is an incredible improvement from the mid 1950s when the death rate was as high as 1/2000. Since it is such a rare event, it is very difficult to properly study bad outcomes solely related to anesthesia.

To place this into perspective, almost 6,000 pedestrians were killed by cars in the United States each year between 1989 and 1991. There were almost 45,000 traffic-related fatalities and 38,000 firearm related fatalities in each of these years as well. Between 1990 and 1991 there were 73 fatalities due to lightning, 46 fatalities to tornadoes and 102 people died in floods. In 1992 almost 40 people died as a result of hurricane Andrew alone. In Connecticut, there were 329 traffic crash deaths in 1998.  But what do all these numbers mean? Absolutely nothing. Your physical condition, scheduled surgery, disease process and exercise capability, or lack of it, contribute the most to the outcome. So basically, if you are young and healthy, drove to the hospital and made it there in one piece, you've likely passed the most dangerous obstacle. With improved monitoring, medication and better understanding of diseases, anesthetic outcomes will only improve.