'I Was Wide Awake' Anaesthetic Awareness Is Rare but Hard to Detect. One Scottish Doctor Is Pioneering a Way of Preventing It
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Summary
ANAESTHESIA has come a long way since the days when patients were knocked out with chloroform or ether-soaked gauze. With devastating simplicity, exposure to either drug rendered a person completely unconscious. Back then, the only problem was that a significant number of patients failed to regain consciousness after their surgery.
In search of more complete anaesthesia, ideally something comprising drugs that did not kill the patient, an American anaesthetist discovered in 1942 a naturally occurring muscle relaxant found in plants and originally used by native Americans as an potent arrow poison. Curare was used to paralyse the body, meaning fewer drugs were needed to render a patient unconscious.See the full content of this document
Extract
'I Was Wide Awake' Anaesthetic Awareness Is Rare but Hard to Detect. One Scottish Doctor Is Pioneering a Way of Preventing It
In its synthetic form, curare is still used today, making it much easier for surgeons to access deep body cavities without using high doses of anaesthesia. But as one anaesthesia problem was solved, another came to the fore: anaesthetic awareness.
Every year millions of people in the UK are given general anaesthetics. In most cases, doses of so...See the full content of this document
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