FRIDAY, Jan. 5, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- Psychological damage from "anesthetic awareness" after surgery may be less common than previously thought, according to new research.
Anesthetic awareness occurs when a person is aware of some portion of his or her surgery while under general anesthesia. In some patients, anesthetic awareness can cause long-term psychological effects and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
The study, published in the January issue of Anesthesiology, included almost 2,700 surgical patients scheduled for general anesthesia at Linkoping University in Sweden. Ninety-eight (3.7 percent) of the participants reported some type of awareness during a previous surgery.
When the participants who reported awareness were interviewed further, 33 of them did not have true anesthetic awareness, because they had another type of anesthesia, or had mistaken awareness for nightmares, memories before or after surgery, or other recollections.
Among the remaining cases of likely anesthetic awareness, the recollections included hearing, feeling or seeing something during surgery and pain, which was less common.
Only one-third of the participants reported an emotional reaction to their anesthetic awareness. Of these participants, two-thirds reported no lasting psychological effects. The remaining third experienced nightmares, anxiety or flashbacks, some lasting only a few days or weeks. Only one person had symptoms indicative of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Some of the patients who reported emotional reactions were able to recover from anxiety by going on to have future surgeries with completely successful anesthesia.
While psychological effects from anesthetic awareness may not be as common or severe as previously thought, anesthetic awareness is still an important potential complication of general anesthesia.
"We hope that knowledge and awareness [of anesthetic awareness] has already spread among health care professionals, and this study should not be interpreted as dismissing the significance of this complication," said lead author Peter Samuelsson in a prepared statement.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about general anesthesia.
