Safety Issues With Anesthesia on Children Under 7

Anesthesia is the practice of putting patients to sleep during surgeries or numbing pain locally in the case of minor operations. While anesthetics are used regularly on adults, specialists caution that using anesthesia on children can raise a range of safety and health issues, including memory impairment and diminished learning ability. Young children with underlying or chronic medical conditions have the highest risk of side effects from anesthesia. Parents must cooperate actively with doctors and nurses to limit any risk and safety concerns.

Children's Hospitals

• Children under 7 years of age who must undergo surgery are usually treated in children's hospitals. Nurses at these institutions are trained to put both nervous parents and frightened children at ease while taking extra precautions to prepare the child for anesthesia and surgery. This form of special care before a medical procedure is called psychosocial support. One of the major concerns that nurses offering pyschosocial support must deal with is the children's fear of separation from their parents. Children 2 to 5 years of age are most affected by this fear of separation, and nurses provide parents with guidance on how to quell these concerns.

Preparation

• Safety is the most important concern when preparing children for anesthesia and surgery. Doctors will not operate on a child if they have any reason to believe that a pre-existing condition may cause complications following anesthesia or surgery. In preparing a child, doctors ask parents to visit a pediatric anesthesiologist the day before surgery or, in more urgent cases, several hours prior to the medical procedure. The anesthesiologist will assess the child for any flu symptoms, viruses or colds that make anesthesia and surgery inadvisable. Doctors recommend that surgeries be delayed if the child comes down with a cold within one week of the scheduled operation.

Parental Obligations

• Parents play a crucial role in ensuring their child's safety prior to anesthesia. Doctors instruct parents to follow a clear set of guidelines in preparing their child the night before. The most important rule is to either limit what a child eats and drinks before an operation or to eliminate food and liquid intake altogether. If surgery is scheduled for the morning, doctors ask parents to ensure that their children stop eating before midnight. This fast includes chewing gum and candy. Parents must also supervise their children as they brush their teeth to ensure that toothpaste is not swallowed.

  If a child is especially nervous prior to anesthesia, nurses may provide oral medication to calm him down. This is administrated within an hour of surgery. Parents may be permitted to accompany children over age 1 into the operating room, but they must first receive permission from the anesthesiologist.

Treatment

• Most children under 8 years of age are anesthetized with gas inhaled through a clear mask placed over their mouth. Needles are rarely used, as this may startle an already anxious child. Following an operation, children are always kept under observation in the hospital's Post Anesthesia Care Unit for at least 30 minutes or as long as it takes for the child to regain consciousness.

  Nausea and vomiting may occur in some children shortly after they awake from anesthesia. Nurses are prepared to treat these side effects promptly and may require that a child remain under close observation for up to 60 minutes after surgery. In these cases, parents are asked to refrain from visiting.

Permanent Risks

• A study published in 2010 by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that the repeated use of anesthetics on small children may lead to learning disabilities and memory impairment. Professor Klas Blomgren's study revealed that anesthetics may result in stem cell reduction among children. The stem cells that are most often affected are in the brain's hippocampus. This area is responsible for a child's memory. Blomgren's study on mice found that anesthesia led to a notable decrease in the number of hippocampus stem cells.