Long-term psychosocial outcomes after intraoperative awareness with recall

Posttraumatic stress disorder, a common psychiatric disorder in the general population, may follow a traumatic experience of awareness with recall during general anesthesia.

We conducted a matched cohort design with 9 subjects after intraoperative awareness with recall during general anesthesia. A psychiatric diagnostic interview and questionnaire were performed on 9 matched controls and 9 subjects, a median of 17.2 years from their documented awareness episode. The subjects and the matched controls completed a battery of questionnaires related to psychosocial well-being, after which they participated in a diagnostic Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Axis I Disorders.

Patients with awareness did not seem to differ from their matched controls in subsequent psychosocial outcome, psychiatric morbidity, or quality of life.

We found no indication that intraoperative awareness with recall had any deleterious long-term effects on patients' psychosocial outcome.