Children and Learning Disabilities Following Anesthesia

[Masseter Spasm]

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I heard this story on the radio the other day, as did many of the parents of kids coming in for elective surgery...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102306350

Is anyone else having to convince parents that a modern anesthetic should not make their kid learning disabled?

 

[Bertelman]

I was waiting for the onslaught, but didn't hear a peep. Maybe the kids we treated were just too low-brow for NPR.

Come to think of it, most were repeat customers.

 

[2ndyear]

Great idea for a study, but the reasons for the anesthetics weren't taken into account. Premature kids, kids with chronic health problems, etc. might be likely to have learning disabilities. Guess what. They get more surgery and therefore anesthesia.

 

[Noyac]

Interesting.

 

[pd4emergence]

The study is in this month's Anesthesiology. It came from Mayo and looked at school records for kids that had anesthetics from 1976 to 1982 in and around rochester. It is disconcerting that even in ASA 1 and 2 kids there was an increase in kids that required learning disablity classes when they had more than one anesthetic. One big problem I have with the study is that it is still a relatively small study in an isolated area. Also the data is pretty old and most of the anesthetics were done before widespread use of the pulse ox. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

pd4