Contents:
- Medical Video: What If You Suddenly Woke Up During Surgery?
- How can patients suddenly wake up during surgery?
- Then what will happen?
- Will the doctor know if we wake up in the middle of an operation?
- What should I do if that happens to me?
Medical Video: What If You Suddenly Woke Up During Surgery?
Have you ever imagined waking up in the operating room? Even though you have got general anesthesia. How can that happen? Waking up during surgery when it has received general anesthesia is indeed a rare thing.
Based on what was quoted by CNN, from around 19,300 total anesthesia patients in the UK and Ireland, there was one person who experienced the experience of waking up during surgery. This situation can be said as accidental awareness. The event awakened when the operation was said to be a situation that "happened accidentally. Then, what will happen when someone experiences the situation?
How can patients suddenly wake up during surgery?
There are three types anesthesia, that is local anesthesia, regional anesthesia, and general anesthesia. When you get local anesthesia, only pain is not felt by you, but you are still conscious. Whereas in regional anesthesia, you will be injected with drugs that numb the part to be operated on. General anesthesia or general anesthesia is where you sleep and feel no pain during surgery.
Anesthetists use drugs to relax muscle as part of anesthesia. This drug will make you stop breathing, so the anesthetist uses a ventilator (breathing machine) to help you keep breathing.
For some operations, this drug is important because the surgeon cannot access certain parts of the body without drugs for muscle relaxation. When the patient gets the medicine for muscle relaxation, the patient cannot move so he cannot tell the doctor if the anesthesia is used less (still feels pain).
If the equipment used to monitor the body succeeds in providing signs of 'errors' in the body, the anesthesiologist can suspect that something is wrong. But sometimes these devices do not send signs, so they suddenly wake up when the operation occurs.
Then what will happen?
In some cases, waking up during surgery makes you really hear what is happening in the operating room. You can hear what the medical team discussed in the operation process. Terrible isn't it?
Then can you move? No, you cannot move because of the effects of anesthesia, only your awareness is restored. This may be a relief while making you cringe.
On the one hand, you can't suddenly stand up when you suddenly wake up in the operating room, of course this is a relief. Can't imagine, if you suddenly wake up and stand up? On the other hand, it's like a nightmare, when you scream at hearing a doctor's conversation, but not one hears it, because the scream is only in your mind.
Patients who experience this describe the situation with a strange sensation, such as feeling choking, paralysis, pain, hallucinating, even like experiencing an near-death event (near-death experiences).
Some people even mentioned that he could feel touch. There are also those who experience pain sensations mixed with numbness. But the sudden recovery of consciousness did not last long, most patients reported that they were only conscious for a while, estimated to be no more than 5 minutes.
This situation is indeed possible, because the anesthetic process itself consists of 'sending a signal to sleep' or 'sending a signal to wake up'. Two-thirds of these stages occur when the operation begins or ends, but there are those who experience it during surgery.
Will the doctor know if we wake up in the middle of an operation?
We don't know how the operation process takes place. The medical team certainly must focus on the operation itself and keep the patient stable. This condition is difficult to make the doctor realize if the patient has regained consciousness. But there are some characteristics that can show an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, these two things can be a sign if the patient is awake.
When awake, the patient may feel anxious and stressed out so an increase in pulse and blood pressure occurs. But the drugs that you get before and during surgery also function to avoid the body from stress response, doctors must also have assumptions to identify the problem.
According to Jaideep Pandit, an anesthetist consultant at Oxford University Hospitals, quoted by CNN, another way that can be used to find out awareness is by monitoring the brain, which tracks 'electricity' activity in the brain. Some research shows its benefits, but some others do not show a decrease in the incidence of 'sudden awareness' when the monitor is used.
What should I do if that happens to me?
You may not be able to do anything when you wake up during surgery. Because, the crippling effect of the anesthetic makes you unable to signal to your doctor that you are awake. While this can cause long-term effects, such as anxiety, sleep disorders, flashbacks, and nightmares. Patients who experience this event become afraid and anxious when they have to get total anesthesia again.
Most patients also suspect that the incident is normal, but not. Research also revealed that most patients only found out that what he had experienced was days or months afterwards.
What you can try after the surgery is to talk to the anesthesiologist. You can get an explanation of how this can happen. You can also talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist, because this can cause PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and depression.
