Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
mosaicscience.com
Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
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Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#2Okay this is an interesting article and an interesting subject. But, it looks a lot like fear-mongering. I feel strongly about this because I had two procedures done under local for fear of exactly this situation (coming up but being sedated) and both experiences where tough.
> Founded in 2007, it has now collected more than 340 reports
So 24 self-reported cases a year in all of N America. There are 48 million in patient surgeries performed PA in USA so V conservative estimate is 5*10^-7 chance.
Later, on follow up, my doctor explained to me why they don't worry about patients coming up. It's because this traumatic experience the patient is describing, if they were awake and experience trauma, would result in a raised heart-rate and blood-pressure. The link between trauma and those physical responses is one to one.
If and when patients begin to get a raised heart or raised blood pressure you better believe they're getting a much higher dose and/or a change of anaesthetic.
> One of the largest and most thorough investigations was the fifth National Audit Project carried out by British and Irish anaesthetists’ associations, in which every public hospital in the UK and Ireland had to report any incidents of awareness for a year. The results, published in 2014, found that the overall prevalence was just 1 in 19,000 patients undergoing anaesthesia.
This is comparing apples with elephants. 'incident of awareness' is nothing like the idea of being fully awake and compos during a surgery.
>but many people may feel unable or unwilling to come forward, and would instead prefer to just put the experience behind them.
Speculation
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#3Okay this is an interesting article and an interesting subject. But, it looks a lot like fear-mongering. I feel strongly about this because I had two procedures done under local for fear of exactly this situation (coming up but being sedated) and both experiences where tough . > Founded in 2007, it has now collected more than 340 reports So 24 self-reported cases a year in all of N America. There are 48 million in pa…
That speculation at the end is truly bizzare. I’m sure that, if I suffered such an experience, the first thing I’d do upon waking would be to talk about it!
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#4Thought experiment: what if we were all aware during general anasthesia and felt all the pain and these cases differed only in that they retained a long term memory of it?
I know there are ways to measure pain, brain activity etc that most likely rule this out. But what if? Are experiences, even unpleasant ones, really experienced if they leave no trace at all, not even a memory?
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#5Thought experiment: what if we were all aware during general anasthesia and felt all the pain and these cases differed only in that they retained a long term memory of it? I know there are ways to measure pain, brain activity etc that most likely rule this out. But what if? Are experiences, even unpleasant ones, really experienced if they leave no trace at all, not even a memory?
My idea was that anasthesia switches off consciousness itself. It is like closing your eye when you look at the Sun while using painkillers is like wearing sunglasses.
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#6I'm inclined to chalk this up to false memories. Especially if someone is going in with nervousness or awareness that "waking up without being able to alert the surgeon" is a specific point of anxiety of the patient. But, who knows.
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#7Thought experiment: what if we were all aware during general anasthesia and felt all the pain and these cases differed only in that they retained a long term memory of it? I know there are ways to measure pain, brain activity etc that most likely rule this out. But what if? Are experiences, even unpleasant ones, really experienced if they leave no trace at all, not even a memory?
Potentially relevant research discussing, in part, whether drugs that disrupt memory formation and/or sympathetic nervous system activation can improve outcomes after traumatic events: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620711/
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#8Thought experiment: what if we were all aware during general anasthesia and felt all the pain and these cases differed only in that they retained a long term memory of it? I know there are ways to measure pain, brain activity etc that most likely rule this out. But what if? Are experiences, even unpleasant ones, really experienced if they leave no trace at all, not even a memory?
Yes? You think you keep your memories when you die?
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#9Okay this is an interesting article and an interesting subject. But, it looks a lot like fear-mongering. I feel strongly about this because I had two procedures done under local for fear of exactly this situation (coming up but being sedated) and both experiences where tough . > Founded in 2007, it has now collected more than 340 reports So 24 self-reported cases a year in all of N America. There are 48 million in pa…
That speculation at the end is truly bizzare. I’m sure that, if I suffered such an experience, the first thing I’d do upon waking would be to talk about it!
I remember the doctors asking me after partial removal of a brain tumour if I remembered them waking me up during the surgery.
I wish I did, but I remember absolutely nothing.
This was about 15 years ago, and I don't remember if they said they would wake me up prior to the surgery. Maybe to my parents.
Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)
#10Thought experiment: what if we were all aware during general anasthesia and felt all the pain and these cases differed only in that they retained a long term memory of it? I know there are ways to measure pain, brain activity etc that most likely rule this out. But what if? Are experiences, even unpleasant ones, really experienced if they leave no trace at all, not even a memory?
Yes? You think you keep your memories when you die?
Interestingly, in Germany at least, when someone is killed in an accident, in determining the damages payable to the person's estate (i.e. other people) they take account of how much pain (it is speculated that) the person suffered in the seconds before they died. To me this seems ... weird. I don't think they're worried about psychological trauma in the afterlife, but who knows?