[Awareness in paediatric anaesthesia: Review of the literature]

Awareness, or unwanted recall of intraoperative events during general anesthesia, is not a frequent complication. For adul ts, this complication can lead to adverse psychological consequences like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The incidence of awareness seems to be higher in children than in adults, although in this population, the causes and consequences of awareness remain difficult to define. Compared to adults, there are less psychological effects and complications after awareness and no PTSD has been declared in children. The revival of interest concerning awareness has been stimulated by the availability of new technologies to assess the depth of anesthesia. These monitoring seem to be more accurate in children older than 1 year. More studies are needed to evaluate these monitoring, their ability to detect awareness and, finally, to explore long term consequences of awareness in children.