DETERMINING RETELLING OF EVENTS DURING GENERAL ANESTHESIA IN OPEN-HEART SURGERY PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITALS AFFILIATED TO SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

Introduction: patients' awareness of events during anesthesia are considerable complications more pronounced and increasing since the use of intravenous and general anesthesia. Awareness during anesthesia can lead to psychiatric complication and prolongation of post-surgery convalescence. This also has legal implications for the anesthesiologist. Given the importance of anesthesia awareness and the fact that the anesthesiologist are mainly responsible for ensuring sufficient depth of anesthesia and preventing awareness during anesthesia, the present study aimed to determine the incidence of awareness during anesthesia in the patients undergoing open heart-surgery. Methods: One hundred patients older than 15 years of age and undergoing open-heart surgery were selected. They were examined and interviewed 24 hours after surgery to determine retelling of events during general anesthesia. Results: In this study, anesthesia awareness was detected in five patients (5%) among which 3 patients (3%) only recalled pain and two patients (2%) evoked auditory incidents during open-heart surgery under general anesthesia. Conclusion: anesthesia awareness was detected as 5% in this study according to anesthetics, pump time, hypothermia and the time of stopping injection of anesthetics and operative period. Anesthesia awareness was reported up to 43% in different articles depending on type of operation and changes in the above-mentioned factors.