Table of contents:
- How can the patient suddenly wake up during surgery?
- Then what will happen?
- Will the doctor know if we wake up in the middle of surgery?
- What should I do if this happens to me?
Have you ever imagined waking up in the operating room? Even though you have been under general anesthesia. How did that happen? Waking up during surgery when under general anesthesia is a rare thing.
Based on quoted by CNN, of about 19,300 general anesthesia patients in the UK and Ireland, there is one person who has the experience of waking up during surgery. This situation can be said as accidental awareness. The occurrence of awakening during surgery is said to be an 'accidental' situation. Then, what will happen when someone experiences that situation?
How can the patient suddenly wake up during surgery?
There are three types of anesthesia, namely local anesthesia, regional anesthesia, and general anesthesia. When you get local anesthesia, it will only hurt you that you will not feel, but you will still be conscious. Meanwhile, in regional anesthesia, you will be injected with a drug that numbs the part to be operated on. General or general anesthesia is where you sleep and don't feel pain during surgery.
Anesthetists use drugs to relax muscles as part of anesthesia. This medicine will make you stop breathing, so the anesthetist uses a ventilator (breathing machine) to help keep you breathing.
For some surgeries, this medication is important because the surgeon cannot access certain parts of the body without drugs for muscle relaxation. When the patient receives a drug to relax the muscle, the patient cannot move so that he cannot tell the doctor if the anesthesia is lacking (still painful).
If the equipment used to monitor the body succeeds in showing signs of "fault" in the body, the anesthetist can suspect that something is wrong. But sometimes these tools don't send any signs, so they suddenly wake up when the operation takes place.
Then what will happen?
In some cases, waking up during surgery allows you to actually hear what's going on in the operating room. You can hear what the team of doctors discussed in the process of surgery. Isn't that awful?
Then can you move? No, you cannot move because of the anesthesia, only your consciousness will recover. This may both be both a relief and a horror for you.
On the one hand, you can't suddenly stand up when suddenly getting up in the operating room, of course this is a relief. You can't imagine if you suddenly got up and stood up? On the other hand, it is like a nightmare, when you scream at the doctor's conversation, but no one hears it, because the screaming is only in your head.
Patients who experience this describe the situation with strange sensations, such as feeling choked, paralyzed, painful, hallucinating, or even experiencing a near death event (near-death experiences).
Some have even mentioned that he can feel touch. There are also those who experience a sensation of pain mixed with numbness. But the sudden recovery of consciousness did not last long, most patients report that they were only briefly conscious, estimated to be no more than 5 minutes.
This situation is 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 starts or ends, but some experience it during the operation.
Will the doctor know if we wake up in the middle of surgery?
We don't know how the process in the operating room works. The team of doctors certainly has to focus on the operation itself and keep the patient in a stable state. This condition makes it difficult for doctors to realize if the patient regains consciousness. But there are several features that can indicate an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, these two things can be a sign if the patient is awake.
When awakened, the patient may feel anxious and stressed, causing an increase in pulse and blood pressure. But the drugs you get before and during surgery also serve to prevent the body from responding to stress, doctors must have assumptions to identify the problem.
According to Jaideep Pandit, consultant anesthetist at Oxford University Hospitals, who was quoted by CNN, another way that can be used to determine consciousness is by monitoring the brain, which tracks "electrical" activity in the brain. Some studies have shown a benefit, but others have not shown a decrease in the incidence of "sudden awareness" when the monitor is used.
What should I do if this happens to me?
You may not be able to do anything when you wake up during surgery. Because, the paralyzing effect of the anesthesia makes you unable to signal to the doctor that you are awake. While this can cause long-term effects, such as anxiety, sleep disturbances, flashbacks, and nightmares. Patients who experience this event become afraid and anxious when they have to receive general anesthesia again.
Most patients also suspect that the incident is normal, but it is not. Research also reveals that most patients find out that what they are experiencing is real for days or months afterward.
All you can work on after surgery is to talk to an anesthetist. You can get an explanation how this happened. You can also talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist, as this can cause PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and depression.
