Group targets anesthesia error

[Barad Simith]

Group targets anesthesia error
By Robert Davis, USA TODAY
Posted 10/6/2004 12:22 AM Updated 10/6/2004 7:46 AM

The nation's leading patient-safety oversight group will call Wednesday for hospitals to do more to keep patients from "waking up" during surgery — a sometimes horrifying experience that medical experts believe happens 50 to 100 times each day.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which accredits hospitals and surgical centers that meet its safety criteria, said that while these events occur infrequently — between 0.1% and 0.2% of all surgeries — there is cause for alarm with 21 million operations performed each year.

"There have been people who, when this occurred, said it was their worst hospital experience ever," says Dennis O'Leary, the commission's president.

The problem occurs when anesthesia wears off, and patients become aware of what is happening to them, but they are still paralyzed by drugs and unable to signal that they are awake. Depending on how alert the person becomes, the experience can range from simply hearing operating room conversations (48%), feeling like they can't breathe (48%) or experiencing the pain of surgery (28%), according to a recent study in Anesthesia & Analgesia.

...

[TrogL]

1. Just what I needed to hear. I'm having surgery tomorrow

[foo_bar]

2. I'll take waking up over not waking up

better to err on the side of horror.

[amazona]

3. i'm sure it happens much more often than 0.2 percent of surgeries

My partner has had two surgeries. The first one, he actually had this happen. He could not get the doctor's attention to let him know what was going on. After recovery, he told the nurse word for word what they had been saying during the surgery. She informed the surgeon, and for the second surgery, they used a different anesthetic.

Even if you are able to talk a little, apparently the doctors are used to a certain amount of rambling on and mumbling by people on some anesthetics so they don't necessarily understand that you are really "awake" and not just talking in your sleep.