JCAHO urges surgeons to wake up to "anesthesia awareness"
Ambulatory Safety Monitor, October 21, 2004
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It's a patient's worst nightmare: lying on the operating table while a surgical procedure is being performed, awake and aware, perhaps even feeling terrible pain from a surgeon's scalpel, but being powerless to speak or communicate with the doctors. And, according to a new alert by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), it's happening more often than you think.
This month, the JCAHO urged surgical centers and hospitals across the country to prevent "anesthesia awareness," a condition in which patients wake up while under the influence of general anesthesia, often able to feel the pain of the procedure they're undergoing. According to the JCAHO's statistics, approximately 20,000 to 40,000 patients each year report waking up during surgery, with about one-quarter of that number saying they could feel pain.
"When a patient says 'I was awake during surgery,' you don't laugh and blow them off," JCAHO President Dennis O'Leary, M.D., told the Associated Press. O'Leary also said that patients who suffer anesthesia awareness should receive an apology, and provided with counseling if they undergo the deeply traumatic experience. He added that JCAHO's recommendations might someday become accreditation requirements for surgical facilities.
Anesthesia awareness tends to happen during heart, emergency obstetric, and trauma operations on patients who are not given heavy doses of anesthetic drugs, due to fear of exacerbating an existing illness or condition. However, those lighter doses of drugs have also been administered to healthy patients in order to speed up post-operative care and allow surgeons to perform more procedures, according to JCAHO.
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