Anesthetic awareness? I recently watched the movie AWAKE. I thought it was a great movie.
I understand that anesthetic awareness is extremely unlikely, and really rare. But could someone please explain what causes this, what it’s like, etc.
Thanks
General anaesthesia aims for complete lack of awareness, but nobody is perfect. The incidence of awareness under anaesthesia is of the order of 0.01-0.02%. Why does it happen? A lot of it is due to the need for anaesthetists to give muscle relaxants to make some operations possible. A paralysed patient cannot demonstrate awareness by moving. Why not just give everybody some more anaesthetic? All drugs have side effects, and most anaesthetics in excess are bad for the heart or for respiration or both. In fact awareness is probably most common in obstetric anaesthesia, where the anaesthetist gives as little as possible to the mother so that as little as possible crosses over to the baby.
There is unfortunately no such thing as a depth of anaesthesia meter suitable for routine use, although there are devices based on recording brain waves or responses to clicks in the ear which show some promise. In the meantime anaesthetists rely on signs like rises in pulse and blood pressure, sweating and tears to indicate that the level of anaesthesia is too light..
There are several stages of awareness, from just remembering what was said during the operation to being fully awake, in great pain and unable to move. the last is extremely rare.