Therapeutic Suggestions During General Anesthesia Reduce Postoperative Pain and Opioid Use

Pain Research Forum, 8 February 2021

Surgical patients undergoing general anesthesia are usually thought to lack awareness of their environment and be unable to respond to external stimuli – how could it be otherwise when a person is “put to sleep” by the anesthesiologist? In fact, though it is rare, some patients do report that they have some awareness while under the knife, while it is not uncommon for others to respond to external stimuli though not to remember doing so. All of this must be a bad thing – or at least that has been the prevailing assumption. However, several studies have actually attempted to leverage intraoperative awareness for beneficial purposes, but with mixed effects. Read more.