Animal tests show anaesthetics may harm baby brains
May 16th 2011 12:57
COMMONLY used anaesthetics may be causing brain damage in people, especially babies who receive them while their brains are still developing.
Associate Professor Andrew Davidson, an anaesthetist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, said there was mounting evidence in animals that a range of anaesthetics used on humans were toxic for the brain and could cause lasting damage, including learning and memory difficulties.
He said recently published studies of five-day-old monkeys showed that when they were given ketamine, an anaesthetic commonly used in hospitals, the drug caused some of their brain cells to die. When these monkeys were assessed at two and three years of age, they had significant learning deficits.
There was also evidence that propofol, midazolam, isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane - all commonly used drugs in humans - caused rats' brain cells to die, affecting their ability to complete simple tasks.
Professor Davidson said large studies of children who had received anaesthetics as babies were under way to see if the animal findings could be validated.
He said learning difficulties had been noted in children who had major surgery as babies, but that it was unclear what exactly had caused their brain damage.
''If there is potential injury, it has huge implications for what we are going to do and how we are going to anaesthetise babies because there is evidence that if we don't anaesthetise babies, they will have a poor outcome as well,'' he said yesterday at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists' annual scientific meeting in Kong Kong.
Professor Davidson said the problem could also affect pregnant women given general anaesthetics in their third trimester because some of the anaesthetic could theoretically reach their foetus. Older children could also be at risk.
He said although there was no proof of the problem in humans yet, doctors were already using ketamine less often on children and reconsidering minor surgical procedures in babies because they feared the anaesthetics could cause more damage than what they would endure without surgery .
But Professor Davidson said parents whose children had had anaesthetics as babies should not be alarmed because many babies who had had major surgery had not suffered brain damage.
''There are many babies who have had major surgery who are now professors… . We can't quantify the risk at the moment. But we can't ignore it either, we need to do more research.''
Another anaesthetist, Associate Professor David Scott, yesterday told the meeting that anaesthetics may also be causing cognitive dysfunction, including dementia, in people over 65 who have surgery.
Every day, about 17,000 people in Australia and New Zealand are given anaesthetics. In Australia, about 5 per cent of children and 1 per cent of babies receive anaesthetics each year.
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