Intra-Operative Awareness in Children, Its Recall and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Background:Intra-operative awareness is defined as the recall of events during general anesthesia is reported mostly in adults, while few studies describing the consequences of awareness in children may be due to the difficulties in relying on children’s declaration or communication. The incidence of such an experience like auditory, visual and sensory perception or feeling of pain, weakness or paralysis andanxiety is reported in less than 1% of adults while this rate supposed to be as high as 5% in children. Evaluation of intra-operative awareness, recall and their psychological consequences in pediatrics is not easy as the standard interview; questionnaire and assessments are not applicable on children. In the other hand, postoperative behavioral changes such as anxiety, irritability and sleep disorders are reportedfrequently and encountered by the author in clinic. Unfortunately, anesthesia depth monitoring is not common in pediatrics and specially neonates which make this topic more ambiguous and untouched. Results:This lecture will introduce a 14 year old girl who has experienced intra-operative awareness during a surgery for adrenal tumor excision and poly site placement. We will present the case by her words and discuss about this less.Conclusion:Incidence of Intra-operative awareness seems to be higher than expected in pediatrics who underwent surgery especially in same day surgery setting that the operation supposed to be minor but the patient will experience the pain and operation stress insult.