BY The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE -- New monitors to ensure that patients get the right amount of anesthesia decrease the chances that a patient will wake and remember part of an operation, including the pain.
The monitors let the anesthesiologist know the patient's status by measuring brain waves. Ensuring the patient gets the right amount of anesthesia is expected to reduce the time and costs of recovery. Until now, doctors gave a standard dose of anesthesia, then adjusted it if a patient moved or if there were changes in heart rate, blood pressure, or color of the fingernails and lips.
"People were good at it, but in some ways it was a little like driving a car without a speedometer," said Dr. Kunnathu Geevarghese, an anesthesiologist at Norton Hospital, who regards the monitors as a vast improvement.
In Louisville, Alliant Health System and Jewish Hospital have outfitted all their operating rooms with the devices, which were approved 18 months ago by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. By decreasing the chances of waking and remembering, the devices also may allow doctors and hospitals to avoid malpractice suits based on claims of improper anesthesia. In one such case this summer, a
Virginia woman won a $150,000 judgment after claiming that she was awake and painfully aware of every cut during surgery to remove her ovaries. The case is credited with accelerating the use of the monitors.
Although many doctors are enthusiastic about them, there are also some important skeptics.
"This equipment may be great, but we think it's just too early to tell," said Dr. John Neeld of Atlanta, president of the 35,000-member American Society of Anesthesiologists. "What if we find out after it's been used 100,000 times that it really doesn't help us very much?"
But Harvey Edmonds, director of research for the anesthesia department at the University of Louisville medical school, predicted that the monitors will improve the quality of anesthesia.
"It will make anesthesiologists more aware of subtle differences among patients, and of minute-to-minute changes in responsiveness to drugs," said Mr. Edmonds, who was one of the scientists who participated in the studies that led to FDA approval.
