General Anesthesia Tied to Developmental Wo... (ental or behavioral disorder. After a...)

General Anesthesia Tied to Developmental Woes in Kids

Date:10/21/2008

ental or behavioral disorder.

After adjusting for birth weight, age, gender, race and medical care utilization, the researchers concluded that children exposed to anesthesia were almost twice as likely to have a behavioral or developmental problem.

"This is an important study, but there are a lot of confounding variables," said Dr. Peter Davis, anesthesiologist-in-chief at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. "What exactly are we talking about? Are these kids who wet the bed? Kids who don't do well in school? Kids with behavioral problems? And, are there factors the researchers couldn't sift out from a database? Did all of these kids get the same level of prenatal care? How has their socioeconomic status changed from year to year? Did they all get the same anesthesia agents? I'm not sure the complete story is quite here yet."

Davis said that serious risks from anesthesia are incredibly small for children, though the risk from anesthesia is greater in children than it is in adults.

Both experts felt that any potential risks of anesthesia are likely outweighed by the benefits of surgery, and agreed that the findings are certainly no reason for parents to avoid necessary surgeries for their children. Davis advised parents of children who need to undergo surgery to make sure their child is treated by a pediatric anesthesiologist.

Another study, presented at the same meeting, found that between one and two out of every 100 children receiving general anesthesia reported possible or probable awareness during surgery. The study, which was done by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System, found that 1.3 percent of children reported memories of their surgical procedures that the researchers felt indicated "possible" awareness during the surgery. Another 0.3 percent had specific enough memories that they were considered to have "probable" awareness during the procedure.

Many of these children repor
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