Sleep Sound During Surgery

Saturday, March 1, 2003

Sleep Sound During Surgery (NAPSA)—Waking up during surgery should be the last thing you worry about when heading into the operating room. Thankfully, new research shows that a medical device reduces the risk of this happening. That would have been a good thing for Kate Adamson whoexperienced the problem firsthand. “T can’t forget the horror of having to live through that, of not being able to communicate with anyone, and then wondering when it was going to be over. I could only endure and survive and pray that I would somehow get through it,” Adamsonsaid. More than 20 million people undergo surgical procedures that require general anesthesia each year. New research shows that one to two patients per 1,000 undergoing surgery experience intraoperative awareness with recall, a phenomenon that occurs when patients do not receive enough anesthesia, and unintentionally regain consciousness during their procedures. Approximately 100 patients per day remember their surgery despite being anesthetized. “No doctor ever plans for a patient to wake up during surgery, but it does happen,” said Dr. Peter Sebel, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University Medical Center and lead investigator of a multi-center study that examined how often awareness occurs. “While relatively rare, awareness can be traumatic for the patients who experience it. Studies show that some patients who experience awareness develop significant psychological problems including severe anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks and avoidance of medical personnel.” Despite being anesthetized, approximately 100 patients per operating dayin the U.S. remember their surgery. Brain monitoring technology can reducetherisk of this happening. @ New research showsthat brain monitoring technology called the BIS system can reduce the risk of awareness with recall and its consequences. A recent worldwide clinical study that examined more than 2,500 patients found that when doctors used the BIS monitor to guide administration of anesthesia, the chance of a patient waking up during surgery wasreduced by 82 percent. “We did a very large study to solve the dilemmafor our patients and for the specialty of anesthesiology. And we found that BIS monitoring enables us to reliably measure, detect and prevent the risk of awareness in the vast majority of patients having surgery,” said Dr. Paul Myles, the lead researcher on the B-AWARE study and head of research, Department of Anaesthesia & Pain Management, Alfred Hospital. Adamson concurs. “My hope would be that no oneelse has to endure this, and that people who suffer from awareness can get help. I certainly hope I don’t have to live through another experience like this.” BIS monitoring has been used on more than seven million patients. With the results of this trial, patients can feel more at ease going into surgery and can be spared Adamson’s suffering.

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