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Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

mosaicscience.com

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Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#61

Post by rz2k »

fooqux wrote: post #27
wittyreference wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went on to describe the forearm experiment which showed a much higher rate of awareness. I don’t see why you’ve chosen to omit that. You seem to casually discard the idea that awareness without memory is irrelevant, but when I’ve informed patients of amnestics they’ve been horrified - maybe needlessly so, but I’m not so arrogant as to think “silly patient, your horror is wrong and therefore irrelevant.” Many peo…

> Many people don’t regard “you’ll be in pain and then forget” as the same as “no pain.” I find this incredibly fascinating. If people were to be offered a sum of money in exchange for feeling immense pain for an hour but then having that memory wiped, I wonder how many would shrug and say "I won't remember anything? Sure, sign me up." I wonder at the ethical and morality of such things. If the person's reality is ba…

I think there are ethical questions for the beneficiaries. Isn't like subjecting someone else to intense pain for an hour in order to receive money?

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#62

Post by jeffreyrogers »

DHPersonal wrote: post #34
lr4444lr wrote: post #28

Just an anecdote: I once had a procedure that required I be under a "light" general anesthesia (don't recall which). I was generally paranoid at the time though about everything, and strapped an audio recorder to my leg secretly. Turns out I did wake up mid procedure (the audio suggests doctor and nurse rushed to stop me from touching the area of operation of my face, and that I was distressed) but as the doctor prom…

I recall hearing about this phenomenon about a decade ago, and at the time someone theorized that the specific memory may be lost but the effects were still present, and that these effects could cause general anxiety and distress without the person understanding the reasoning. I think it is perhaps more philosophical than rational, but it did give me pause to consider that perhaps not everyone forgets enough of a sur…

Yeah, they've done experiments with patients with no long-term memory where they do things like shock them when they shake hands. People develop an aversion to it but can't explain why.

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#63

Post by selimthegrim »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #60

I woke up while having my wisdom teeth taken out (doubt it was general anesthesia, but it was something more than local anesthesia). It was incredibly painful. Fortunately they noticed pretty quickly and did something and I was out again pretty quick.

Yes, this has happened to me (Ativan wore off) too but I was more disoriented than in pain at that point.

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#64

Post by hnbad »

bloak wrote: post #10
darkerside wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is that weird tho?

If a type of accident is usually going to cause horrible pain if it causes death, this creates a bigger incentive to avoid serious injury in the first place (which also helps avoid death from those injuries).

If suffering is taken into account for injury, also taking it into account for death avoids situations where it would be preferable for the perpetrator to cause death rather than have the victim survive in pain. There's no threshold because the fatality is considered in addition to rather than instead of the suffering.

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#65

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #60

I woke up while having my wisdom teeth taken out (doubt it was general anesthesia, but it was something more than local anesthesia). It was incredibly painful. Fortunately they noticed pretty quickly and did something and I was out again pretty quick.

This happened to me when I had teeth removed for braces while under N20. When the wisdom teeth came out I opted for sodium pentothol.

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#66

Post by stephenhuey »

cj wrote: post #6

I'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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

Check out the sibling comment in which lr4444lr recounts taking a secret audio recording device into surgery.

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#67

Post by knodi123 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #44
bserge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really the case for medication, as well. I wish doctors would be better in this regard and pay more attention to individual needs. I understand that would be more difficult and would likely increase costs, but still. The way it's done now is as you said, "take x mg at y interval" based on the tests done during drug development. If you don't respond to the medication the same way as the majority, you're in for…

That's well said. Just because it is standard practice doesn't mean its the best approach. Its just the accepted approach. Nassim Taleb has a quote on the subject that i love: "The difference between medicine and poison... is dosage"

Nearly 500 years ago, Swiss physician and chemist Paracelsus expressed the basic principle of toxicology: “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.”

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#68

Post by [deleted] »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #60

I woke up while having my wisdom teeth taken out (doubt it was general anesthesia, but it was something more than local anesthesia). It was incredibly painful. Fortunately they noticed pretty quickly and did something and I was out again pretty quick.

[deleted]

Re: Waking Up During Surgery (2019)

#70

Post by crazygringo »

lr4444lr wrote: post #28

Just an anecdote: I once had a procedure that required I be under a "light" general anesthesia (don't recall which). I was generally paranoid at the time though about everything, and strapped an audio recorder to my leg secretly. Turns out I did wake up mid procedure (the audio suggests doctor and nurse rushed to stop me from touching the area of operation of my face, and that I was distressed) but as the doctor prom…

> pain with no memory is pretty much as good as no pain

I can't speak to your specific case, but in general that's not true.

Even if you have no conscious memory of trauma, it can manifest itself in ongoing stress, fear, and general PTSD-like symptoms.

You may have been lucky in waking up but perhaps without pain, but that's not the case with everyone.

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