More than 40 million patients receive anesthesia each year in North America. The risks associated with anesthesia have progressively decreased, but the mechanisms of action of anesthetic drugs remain ...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)-- Having surgery can be a frightening prospect, but imagine waking up during that surgery when you're not supposed to. As CBS2's Kristine Johnson explained, it happens and the ...

It’s not just the fear of dying on the table that makes patients leery of going under anesthesia. It’s also the fear of waking up much sooner than intended — a paranoia perhaps made greater by the ...

Awareness during anesthesia is a serious complication with potential long-term psychological consequences. Use of the bispectral index (BIS), developed from a processed electroencephalogram, has been ...

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, doctors began wondering if people ever became aware while under anesthesia. They started doing post-operative interviews to find out. Then they took it one step ...

Patients are more likely to experience unintended intraoperative awareness under general anesthesia with the bispectral index protocol than the end-tidal anesthetic-agent concentration, according to a ...

American Society of Anesthesiologists President John Zerwas, MD, wrote a letter to the editor about intraoperative awareness while under anesthesia that was published in the April issue of The ...

A producer of the forthcoming film Awake, starring Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen, says it "will do to surgery what Jaws did to swimming in the ocean." The film focuses on a man who experiences ...

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations on Wednesday asked hospitals to take additional steps to prevent "anesthesia awareness," instances in which patients regain ...

During surgery to remove a damaged right eye, Carol Weihrer woke up. "I was totally awake and aware," she says, "but completely unable to communicate or move in any way at all. …I heard the surgeon ...

A newer system intended to alert doctors when patients are regaining consciousness while under general anesthesia has not lowered incidence of anesthesia awareness any better than conventional ...

Seven years ago, Carol Weihrer, a flutist and office administrator, had her right eye removed. She had been living in pain from a severely scratched cornea for years and had already undergone 17 ...