INTRAOPERATIVE AWARENESS: MAJOR FACTOR OR NON-EXISTENT?

Intraoperative awareness has been brought to our attention and even sensationalized often by the media over the past few years, as a major problem during anesthesia. The true incidence and the actual incidence have been questioned. Others have even questioned if the complication has been reported in order to garner sympathy at the least and financial gain at the most. Certainly the incidence of intraoperative awareness under general anesthesia is rare (0.1-0.2%)1-4 but given that some 21 million anesthetics are administered annually in the United States alone, this figure translates to an occurrence of 20,000 to 40,000 cases. Worldwide the number of cases would easily reach into the millions, especially in countries that lack the resources to administer the newer inhalational anesthetics through state-of- the art anesthetic machines.