Awareness during anesthesia

Awareness during general anesthesia is an uncommon phenomenon, occurring in about 0.1% to 0.2% of cases, and can increase to 1.0% up 1.5% in high-risk surgical patients e.g. obstetric, cardiac surgery and major trauma cases. Multiple risk factors are involved in the occurrence of patient awareness which includes: Patient related factors, surgical factors, anesthesia related factors, malfunctioning anesthetic equipments, doctor related factors. Awareness during anesthesia may cause sever psychological sequale as intrusive recollections, avoidance, hyperarousal and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) impair the patients’ quality of life and impose restrictions that frequently are more severe than the primary disease for which surgery was performed.. Intraoperative monitoring of ”depth of anesthesia” can significantly decrease the risk of awareness..