Open AccessAwareness with Recall During General Anesthesia
Author(s) -
Seppo Ranta,
Riitta Laurila,
Johanna Saario,
T. AliMelkkilä,
Markku Hynynen
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
anesthesia and analgesia/anesthesia and analgesia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1526-7598
pISSN - 0003-2999
DOI - 10.1097/00000539-199805000-00035
Subject(s) - medicine , intraoperative awareness , isoflurane , propofol , anesthesia , depression (economics) , incidence (geometry) , complication , anesthetic , recall , psychiatry , pediatrics , surgery , linguistics , philosophy , physics , optics , economics , macroeconomics
We studied the associated factors and incidence of awareness during general anesthesia and the nature of subsequent psychiatric disorders. Patients older than 12 yr undergoing surgery under general anesthesia in a secondary care hospital during 1 yr were included in the study. The doses of anesthetics were calculated for the patients with and without awareness. There were 4818 operations under general anesthesia; 2612 (54%) patients were interviewed. Ten (0.4% of those interviewed) patients were found to have undisputed awareness, and there were nine (0.3%) patients with possible awareness. The doses of isoflurane (P < 0.01) and propofol (P < 0.05) were smaller in patients with awareness. Five patients with awareness underwent a psychiatric evaluation. One patient experienced sleep disturbances afterward, but the other four patients did not have any after effects. In conclusion, awareness is a rare complication of general anesthesia associated with small doses of anesthetics.