Anesthesia Awareness

[Poety]

Hi,

I'm curious about anesthesia awareness and whether or not its a common phenomenon. During our surgical rotations, we're always taught that the vitals provide the anesthesiologists with the information they need for pain control and awareness level - have many of you experienced this with your patients or is mostly a farce?

TIA Poety

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[joncmarkley]

vitals only tip you off 30% of the time....intraop awareness happens in 1 of 3000 cases 😳

 

[Laryngospasm]

Pretty sure this subject has been beaten to death, if you search you should find it. 🙂 And jonc those are some pretty interesting statistics that you quote, I think they would be difficult to prove at best, mostly because these are unknowable statistics for the most part as many cases are not reported, less versus more vigilant anesthesiologist and charting etc, but some nice sounding numbers none the less. 👍

 

[Poety]

Pretty sure this subject has been beaten to death, if you search you should find it. 🙂 And jonc those are some pretty interesting statistics that you quote, I think they would be difficult to prove at best, mostly because these are unknowable statistics for the most part as many cases are not reported, less versus more vigilant anesthesiologist and charting etc, but some nice sounding numbers none the less. 👍

glad to know its been beaten to death! I'm searching now - thanks laryngo!

 

[Poety]

glad to know its been beaten to death! I'm searching now - thanks laryngo!

Damn this was beaten to death - ok, so I read up on it, and about that BIS machine blah blah - but my question is, why is it so bad for them to be awake if they're not feeling any pain? If they're feeling pain then yeah, thats horrible, but I was awake for my section, who really cares, I was numb from the chest down anyway. What would REALLY be the difference between some hernia repair/hyste/whatever as long as no pain is involved. CT surgery I can understand ofcourse - but what I saw were people whining over hernia repairs c/o that they "remembered it"

 

[Pinky]

Later this year, a movie titled "Awake" comes out i theaters.

From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211933/plotsummary

In "Awake," a psychological thriller that tells the story of a man (Hayden Christensen) undergoing heart surgery while experiencing a phenomenon called "anesthetic awareness," which leaves him awake but paralyzed throughout the operation. As various obstacles present themselves, his wife (Jessica Alba) must make life-altering decisions while wrestling with her own personal drama.

I wonder how more cases of awareness be reported after this movie comes out.

 

[militarymd]

Damn this was beaten to death - ok, so I read up on it, and about that BIS machine blah blah - but my question is, why is it so bad for them to be awake if they're not feeling any pain? If they're feeling pain then yeah, thats horrible, but I was awake for my section, who really cares, I was numb from the chest down anyway. What would REALLY be the difference between some hernia repair/hyste/whatever as long as no pain is involved. CT surgery I can understand ofcourse - but what I saw were people whining over hernia repairs c/o that they "remembered it"

Because you can get a lawyer to get the anesthesiologist to pay you millions of dollars.

 

[Pinky]

I was doing the anesthesia post-ops one morning and found a patient who complained that she was aware during surgery and remembered everything that occurred during her hernia repair. . . . under spinal.

 

[Laryngospasm]

Damn this was beaten to death - ok, so I read up on it, and about that BIS machine blah blah - but my question is, why is it so bad for them to be awake if they're not feeling any pain? If they're feeling pain then yeah, thats horrible, but I was awake for my section, who really cares, I was numb from the chest down anyway. What would REALLY be the difference between some hernia repair/hyste/whatever as long as no pain is involved. CT surgery I can understand ofcourse - but what I saw were people whining over hernia repairs c/o that they "remembered it"

Its the psychological aspect of not being able to move or talk, and the thought that they could feel pain at any moment--stress makes unpainful things into painful things, and what military said 😉