Palmo Anest

Increase risk of MI and cancer following prolonged deep anaesthesia

Read from book of joe about this interesting article from Los Angelos Times regarding the increase risk of cardiac and cancer death following prolonged deep anaesthesia.

This is part of what Shari Roan, Times Staff Writer wrote:

Now, two startling studies suggest that the effects of anesthesia linger for a year or longer, increasing the risk of death long after the surgery is over and the obvious wounds have healed.

"We don't know whether the things we do really have an effect that lasts out to a very long period of time, but there is enough evidence to suggest it might," says Dr. David Gaba, a professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. "Even if it's a subtle and fairly uncommon phenomenon, it could affect an awful lot of people."

About 20 million Americans undergo surgery with general anesthesia each year.

Worries about the long-term effect of anesthesia — and the demands for additional studies — began to emerge recently when two research groups published papers linking deep sedation and an increased risk of death in the year or two after surgery.

One study, presented last fall at the American Society of Anesthesiologists annual meeting by Swedish researchers, showed that the duration spent under deep anesthesia is a significant risk factor for predicting death up to two years after surgery. Although the patients in the study were undergoing non-cardiac surgery, most deaths resulted from heart attacks or cancer.

The other study, published in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia in January by Duke University researchers, found that longer amounts of time spent under deep sedation increased the risk of death in the year following surgery. The patients in the Duke study underwent major, non-cardiac surgery with general anesthesia, and again, deaths in the first year after surgery were primarily from heart attacks or cancer.

Now I think we would have to use our BIS monitor more often (we don't use it for all the cases coz of the cost of the probes - rm100+ / piece). I personally find the BIS monitor very useful in controlling the depth of anaesthesia.

posted by LT @ 12:00 AM