Anesthesia – Awareness Occurrence

Transcript

Intraoperative awareness or awareness under anesthesia is extremely rare. When you hear about anesthesia awareness today, it usually relates to someone telling them about an anesthesia awareness event that happened 30 or 40 years ago when anesthesia was not as safe. And anesthesia awareness was still rare, but more prevalent than today. The invention of detailed anesthesia monitoring, including specific awareness monitoring, make intraoperative or anesthesia awareness a very rare occurrence today. One important distinction to anesthesia awareness is when a patient receives only sedation. Under sedation, patients can freely move and potentially hear noises and voices in the background, which is completely normal and not anesthesia awareness. If you don’t like to be potentially in that position where you don’t have pain, but can still hear noises, you should not hesitate to discuss this fear with your anesthesiologist to decide which anesthetic plan might be better suited for you and your specific circumstances.