for hip replacement- is it regional or general anesthesia?

Regional anesthesia usually results in less blood loss, and you will feel a lot better afterward. We usually sedate patients during the operation so they snooze through most of it, but breathe on their own throughout, and can be easily awakened if the need arises (and at the end of the case).

The drawback to regional is that in some cases that take a long time, the surgery will outlast the spinal, and then you end up with a general anyway. That is more likely in a complicated re-do case, not a routine hip replacement.

There may be other advantages/disadvantages to either technique, based on your particular medical situation. Your anesthesiologist should discuss that with you.

If/when I have a joint replaced, I'm having a spinal. Best. Anesthetic. Ever.

I'll preface this answer by saying that I've had both hips replaced in separate surgeries, both under general anesthesia.

Before you go into surgery, your anesthetist or anesthesiologist will meet with you and discuss the kind of anesthesia you'll have. He or she will go over your medical history. You can ask any questions you have. In the meantime here's a web page from the National Library of Medicine of the Nat'l Inst. of Health with many links to reliable, authoritative information about anesthesia.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/anesthesia.html

Advantage of regional is that you will likely wake right up and feel pretty good, no grogginess. With regional, a heavy sedative can also be used so that the patient remembers nothing. Regional may also be used instead of general in patients who have potential lung/respiratory problems (such as emphysema, smoking) because the risk of developing more serious breathing problems is lower than with general. A possible side effect of a certain type of regional is headache (I don't remember whether this is a side effect of the epidural or the spinal)

A disadvantage of general is that there can be nausea afterwards. However, the patient can be given meds that counteract the nausea. Also, there might be grogginess for a day or so.

Sometimes the surgeon has a preference about which kind of anesthesia to use. Sometimes the anesthesiologist has a preference. My surgeon didn't care. My anesthesiologist for my first hip sort of assumed that I would get a general because I think that's the way he had always done it. I had done my homework beforehand and determined that regional was my preference. But I didn't argue with him and had a general. That worked out so well that for my 2nd hip I ASKED for general. I decided that was a pretty good way to go. I had no problems either time (except nausea).