After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories • Hacker News Board

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#71

Post by larrys » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #57

joezydeco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year I had a medical procedure and was given "twilight" anesthesia. I was explicitly told "you need to have your spouse or a friend here because we're going to give you instructions afterward and you probably won't remember it". And, sure enough, my memory was pretty much wiped for the hour or so after the event. Later that evening I had a conversation with my wife that went like this: "Um, did you help…

The fact that anesthesiologists apparently deliberately induce amnesia with benzos scares the shit out of me, much more so than full general anesthesia does (which seems backwards, right, because general anesthesia is actually dangerous). Why do they want me not to remember anything? Is it that horrible?

Not to mention that they are free to literally ask you anything and you won't even know what the questions were or what your answers were.

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#72

Post by imaginenore » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

djfm wrote: post #59

If no link can be found between the dental surgery and the memory-forming loss, could it be that there is actually no link? Have any other hypotheses been researched besides the surgery?

Exactly. It can be just a coincidence. A blood clot, undetected cancer, genetic disorder, or a million other things.

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#73

Post by GoodOldNe » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

rayalez wrote: post #38

Damaging my mind is my biggest fear. I had a simple surgery a year ago(shoulder arthroscopy), and I specifically said that I don't agree to general anesthesia or any kind of sedatives, because even a small probability of a small brain damage isn't worth it for me. Doctors tried to push me into accepting the general anesthesia, saying that it's the only option(and that we lose brain cells every day really, so who care…

He failed to mention that local anesthesia can also lead to neurotoxicity, and I was too ignorant to know about it(for some reason I assumed that local anesthetics are harmless, and didn't do my research).

You get that "neurotoxicity" in this case is almost exclusively referring to deleterious effects that local anesthetics can have on nerves at the site of injection, right? Subcutaneous injection of local anesthetics will have very little, if any, involvement with your brain.

You did the right thing finding a surgeon that would work with a block instead of GA if you were concerned about the (potentially real, if not that bad, effects of GA) but I think your fears of local anesthetics causing CNS damage are overblown and I wouldn't want others to refuse the use of them in themselves or their children based on your post.

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#74

Post by Romme » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:40 PM UTC

rayalez wrote: post #38

Damaging my mind is my biggest fear. I had a simple surgery a year ago(shoulder arthroscopy), and I specifically said that I don't agree to general anesthesia or any kind of sedatives, because even a small probability of a small brain damage isn't worth it for me. Doctors tried to push me into accepting the general anesthesia, saying that it's the only option(and that we lose brain cells every day really, so who care…

I got tinnitus a week after a dental procedure with anesthesia. Don't know how to live with it, to be honest. Your fear is anything but irrational.

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#75

Post by imaginenore » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:40 PM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #58

A few comments in this thread mention "genera anaesthesia side effects" and long-term problems. I have never heard of this and a quick wikipedia/google search is not bringing up good source on the topic. Is this substantiated or another "vaccines cause autism" kind of thing?

General anaesthesia is actually somewhat dangerous.

Your chance of dying from anaesthesia is around 1 in 100,000 - 185,000. While it may seem like a safe number, it's orders of magnitude higher than winning a major lottery.

That number also doesn't include medical fuckups during anaesthesia, like overdose, airway obstruction. In that case the number shoots up to 1:2500 - 1:5000.

http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/95.long

1.5 people in 1000 wake up, so the pain shock alone can kill you.

Dental anaesthesia is known to kill, around 2 children per year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/dental-sedation-chi...

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#76

Post by curiousjorge » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

so is root canal dangerous??

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#77

Post by themgt » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #19

joezydeco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year I had a medical procedure and was given "twilight" anesthesia. I was explicitly told "you need to have your spouse or a friend here because we're going to give you instructions afterward and you probably won't remember it". And, sure enough, my memory was pretty much wiped for the hour or so after the event. Later that evening I had a conversation with my wife that went like this: "Um, did you help…

Yep, I've had that. Sitting in a hospital bed after my appendectomy: "Hey, I'm awake! That was easy." "You've been awake for two hours." "...Oh. Huh."

Yeah, I've had that also. Very strange, like how does one recognize that one has "woken up" from being already awake? It's like, oh, the tape recorder turned back on.

Maybe we're just the tape recorder?

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#78

Post by Havoc » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #57

joezydeco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year I had a medical procedure and was given "twilight" anesthesia. I was explicitly told "you need to have your spouse or a friend here because we're going to give you instructions afterward and you probably won't remember it". And, sure enough, my memory was pretty much wiped for the hour or so after the event. Later that evening I had a conversation with my wife that went like this: "Um, did you help…

The fact that anesthesiologists apparently deliberately induce amnesia with benzos scares the shit out of me, much more so than full general anesthesia does (which seems backwards, right, because general anesthesia is actually dangerous). Why do they want me not to remember anything? Is it that horrible?

Before an operation I was given a pre-med that also induced something like amnesia. About two hours before the op. Everything after taking that pill is a blur - I can recall maybe 5mins out of like 8 hours (short operation, so most of those 8 aren't op)

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#79

Post by joezydeco » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #69

jandrewrogers wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of amnesiacs like midazolam in conjunction with unpleasant surgery has become common practice because it has been shown to significantly reduce the psychological trauma associated with surgical procedures and related changes in behavior as a result. You will still experience the trauma at the time whether you remember it or not, but the experience is not persistently encoded into your brain. This is important…

And that makes intuitive sense. I'm still left with the question: is the experience of surgery really that bad?

Given the procedure I was undergoing[1], I can understand the preference of doctors to make sure the patient doesn't remember it.

[1] (let's just say this was moving a camera in a....direction...against traffic)

Re: After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories

#80

Post by jwdunne » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 8:11 PM UTC

imaginenore wrote: post #75

vvpan wrote: post #58

A few comments in this thread mention "genera anaesthesia side effects" and long-term problems. I have never heard of this and a quick wikipedia/google search is not bringing up good source on the topic. Is this substantiated or another "vaccines cause autism" kind of thing?

General anaesthesia is actually somewhat dangerous. Your chance of dying from anaesthesia is around 1 in 100,000 - 185,000. While it may seem like a safe number, it's orders of magnitude higher than winning a major lottery. That number also doesn't include medical fuckups during anaesthesia, like overdose, airway obstruction. In that case the number shoots up to 1:2500 - 1:5000. http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/…

When having staples inserted (and also removed a year later) into the growth plates in my knees, I was given the option of having my legs numbed too for pain relief. I'm glad I took that option now - unless it was post-op only.

From the second op, I had a huge black bruise on my thigh in the shape of a hand print. I couldn't imagine the pain if I'd have woken during the cause of that.