SYDNEY, May 24 (Xinhua) -- A team of international researchers, including researchers from the University of Sydney, have found that as many as one in 10 patients who undergo general anaesthesia are aware of outside stimuli, shedding new light on how the brain responds to intubation.
The study, published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia and released to the public on Tuesday, detailed results of a trial of 338 patients aged 18 to 40; one in 10 responded to commands after intubation but before surgery, half of them also confirmed experiencing pain while under.
This means about one in 20 patients were shown to experience the pain of their medical procedure - despite having no recollection of said pain after waking up.
Furthermore, female patients were three times likely to respond to stimuli than males.
Senior author on the study and anaesthetist from the University of Sydney and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Professor Robert Sanders, told Xinhua on Tuesday that the findings challenge the notion that anaesthesia is solely an unconscious state.
"In fact, many different conscious states can occur under anaesthesia, such as dreaming. Our overarching aim is to develop even better ways to protect patients from regaining consciousness during planned general anaesthesia," said Sanders.
Sanders said that this initial study would help give a greater understanding of a concept known as "connected consciousness," which describes when patients are in a state of being able to respond to outside stimuli but are not fully conscious.
He said that it would allow collaborators across the globe to better understand the state of the brain under anesthesia and reduce the odds of people being aware of the pain.
"We are developing new monitoring strategies and approaches for anaesthesia. The increased risk of connected consciousness in females is something that we think is particularly important for us to address,' said Sanders. ■