“How often does anesthetic awareness happens? ”
I'm 37, and I heard about this thing called anesthetic awareness. I know that it probably doesn't happen that often during surgery, but what happens when it does?
3 Answers
Very uncommon, some minor recollection usually without pain. Most often just words heard in the OR
Dr. J. Arthur Saus
Anesthesiologist
Awareness during general anesthesia is extremely rare! But when it does occur in those rare cases, it makes a lot of news (probably because it is such an uncommon phenomenon). Most of the time when it occurs, the cause of awareness under general anesthesia is not understood. There are other very rare times when awareness occurs because of a mistake in administration of anesthesia medications or a malfunction of some component of the equipment used to carefully administer the correct dose of the anesthetic agent.
It is very rare. Less than one per thousand. Most of the time when it happens, it is in the form of hearing some voices talking without remembering the content of the conversation. Anything more than that is exceedingly rare.
