Anesthesia awareness, or unintended intra-operative awareness occurs during general anesthesia, on the operating table, when the patient has not been given enough of the general anesthetic or analgesic to render the patient unconscious during general anesthesia (often when agents used to paralyze the patient have been administered). In brief, it is the post-operative recall of intra-operative events.
However, it can also occur in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) or in the intensive-care unit (ICU), where patients are kept sedated, tranquilized and sometimes paralyzed (and intubated) and are connected to life support systems, awaiting normalization of their physiology.
Read more about Anesthesia Awareness: Background, Awareness and Recall, The Experience of Anesthesia Awareness, Conscious Sedation and Monitored Anesthesia Care, Incidence, Outcomes, Prevention, Monitors, Controversies, Remembrance, Cognitive Psychologists Study Memory Under Anesthesia, Cultural References
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“The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)