Anesthesia generally used to lessen pain, discomfort, and shock allowing patients to undergo surgery without crying because of the unbearable pain.
Since there are several forms of surgery, certain types of anesthesia are required.
It is categorized into various types as general, local, regional, and conscious sedation.
With the use of anesthesia, the patient is expected to feel no pain during the operation and mostly in all cases; the patient will not remember anything about the whole process of surgery.
As anesthesia increases the patient’s comfort, doctors and medical staff will be able to work well and safely during the surgery.
But a recent study and laboratory experiment have shown that repeated exposure to anesthesia may contribute and lead to long term effects and health risks to surgery patients.
It was discovered that those children under 4 years who were repeatedly exposed to anesthesia are more likely to develop learning disabilities and difficulties in school compared to those who are not. However, risks are noticeably increased for kids exposed to 2 or more doses of anesthesia.
Similar results were obtained with children under 2 years of age and below who also experienced multiple exposures to anesthesia.
Although repeated exposure to anesthesia cannot be directly concluded to cause certain type of learning disability among youngsters, it is encouraged that as much as possible parents and relatives would take certain precautions to avoid future complications.
