Do patients wake up during surgery under general anesthesia?
The general incidence of awareness under anesthesia is about 0.2% to 1.5%, and even then occurs mostly in emergency situations (emergent c-sections and traumas) where there is hemodynamic instability (hypotension and major blood loss), and in procedures involving cardiopulmonary bypass. For comparison, the risk of dying randomly in a motor vehicle crash is about 1.41%. So at worst the risk of awareness is the same as the risk of dying while driving your car today. Nevertheless, anesthesiologists have been very cognizant of this complication even before today’s media attention regarding this subject. Every precaution is taken to prevent this occurrence. However, there is no monitoring equipment that is standard of care for preventing awareness under anesthesia. In fact, out of the two studies that have shown that the BIS monitor may help with awareness, only one was done in a way to eliminate bias (B-AWARE). Additionally, this monitor is often used a reference by which to prevent anesth
