Anesthesia Raises Head and Neck Surgery Risk

WEDNESDAY, July 20, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- The risk for complications related to head and neck surgery rise with the length of time patients are placed under anesthesia, a new study finds.

Doctors from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn made this discovery while investigating whether a patient's age has any bearing on the outcome of his or her surgery.

Age did not provide any indication of whether there would be complications, the researchers found.

But they did find that the odds of a patient having a major complication increased by 0.6 percent with every minute of anesthesia. That means for every hour under anesthesia, the odds of having a major complication increased by more than a third, the researchers said.

The review involved 157 patients who underwent a major head and neck surgical procedure between January 1999 and January 2004.

The findings appear in the July issue of Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery.

More information

The National Institutes of Health have more about anesthesia.