Will general anesthesia affect intelligence?

As we all know, if you want to perform a major surgery, you need anesthesia. Anesthesia is generally divided into two categories, general anesthesia and local anesthesia. If the patient is young or the surgery is major, general anesthesia is usually required. During general anesthesia, the patient will completely lose consciousness and will only wake up after the anesthetic effect wears off. Some people worry about the impact of general anesthesia on children. So, will general anesthesia affect intelligence?

Does anesthesia affect a child's intelligence?

Surgery is also a traumatic process, which will inevitably cause trauma to the human body. The same is true for anesthesia, which will more or less interfere with the body's normal metabolism. No medical treatment option is 100% perfect and is always the result of choosing the lesser of two evils. We choose to perform surgery and give the patient anesthesia because anesthesia and surgery are indispensable. The benefits of anesthesia and surgery to the patient far outweigh the harms to the patient, and the probability of these harms occurring is very small.

Anesthesia is the use of anesthetic drugs to put the patient in a state of temporary painlessness. General anesthesia is just one of many anesthesia methods that allows the patient to be in a state of painlessness and complete sleep.

Children's organs are not fully developed, and their body compensatory functions are weaker than those of adults, so the chance of anesthesia accidents is greater. However, doctors will choose appropriate anesthesia methods based on the characteristics of pediatric patients to minimize the use of general anesthetics.

Intelligence and Intellectual Development

Intelligence refers to a person's observation, memory, thinking ability, imagination, etc. Some people believe that intelligence is the ability of people to choose the best option from many possible options, that is, the brain's ability to receive, store, and process external information, and to extract and use information from the "memory bank" to solve problems.

Intellectual development is influenced by many factors, among which genetic factors are the prerequisite for intellectual development, the brain is the material basis of intellectual development, and environment and education are the decisive conditions for intellectual development. Children can only achieve different degrees, faster or slower intellectual development under the influence of these factors in a long-term and comprehensive manner rather than a short-term and independent manner.

Anesthetics work by blocking the transmission of pain. During the operation, the anesthesiologist must continuously add anesthetics to the patient according to the needs of the operation. When the surgery is over, the anesthesia is stopped. The function of general anesthesia is to block the transmission of pain to the brain and temporarily suppress the child's consciousness. During surgery, the anesthesia machine

It can display various vital indicators and closely monitor the blood supply to important organs such as the brain, heart, and kidneys. If the slightest discrepancy is found, the anesthesiologist will correct it in time. In addition, anesthesia is a reversible process. As the anesthetic drugs are discontinued, they will gradually be metabolized and disappear, and the child will slowly wake up. Therefore, unless an anesthetic accident occurs, general anesthesia will not have adverse effects on the child's intellectual development.

The side effects of general anesthesia are temporary. Within one week after surgery, patients may experience varying degrees of insomnia and short-term memory impairment. Therefore, some parents attribute these changes in their children after surgery to intellectual decline caused by anesthesia. In fact, surgery for children is a traumatic process and recovery takes a certain amount of time. This does not mean that the child’s intellectual development has been affected. Every year in my country, thousands of children undergo general anesthesia for surgical treatment, and some undergo it multiple times. However, there is no data showing that general anesthesia has an adverse effect on the intelligence of children. Moreover, intelligence cannot be measured as precisely as height or weight, and even the best intelligence tests have limitations.

During surgery or anesthesia, if brain cells are deprived of oxygen due to various reasons and rescue is not timely, brain cells will be damaged. If the duration exceeds 5 to 8 minutes, the patient may suffer from intellectual disability, vegetative state or even more serious adverse consequences, which are possible accidents during anesthesia. Fortunately, the incidence of such anesthesia accidents is extremely low.

Generally speaking, anesthesia is very safe and general anesthesia will not affect the intellectual development of the child. On the contrary, pain, surgical operation process, unfamiliar environment of the operating room, etc. will have adverse effects on the child's physical and mental health. Parents should have a correct understanding of this and cooperate with doctors to successfully perform surgical treatment for their children.