So here’s the follow up to my original post about the Grey’s Anatomy episode that we all found so shocking.  I’ve posted a clip courtesy of You Tube below.  It’s just the first 8 minutes, but fast forward to minute 1:32 to start the drama!

As it turns out, the patient has a mutation in a liver enzyme that metabolizes medicine.  Her specific mutation causes her to metabolize medicine quicker than the average person, which they use as an explanation for why the patient wakes up from anesthesia.  Although this seems a plausible explanation, it would likely not happen in real life.  The mutation certainly does exist; however, because of the use of continuous monitoring during anesthesia care, it would become apparent to the anesthesiologist that the patient was starting to respond to the surgical stimulus long before she would be fully awake.  She would be given additional doses of analgesics, hypnotics, and muscle relaxants to make sure that she would remain anesthetized, in spite of her quick metabolism of these drugs.

Does awareness under anesthesia occur?  Yes, but exceedingly rarely.  Dr. Dhar has information on it in her book, Before the Scalpel, which you can find on amazon.com.  With all the monitoring that takes place, it is highly unlikely that an event such as the one portrayed on Grey’s Anatomy would happen.

V3XNPT9ER8FD

Tags: anesthesia, Gray's Anatomy, surgery

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.