General Anesthesia May Lower IQ in Young Children
General Anesthesia May Lower IQ in Young Children – Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center found that children aged 4 and younger who receive general anesthesia for surgery may suffer from some damaging side-effects, such as a decrease in their IQ, language comprehension, and grey matter. Anesthesia seems to affect not just brain function but also brain composition.
For the study, researchers compared the scores of 53 participants of a language development study aged 5 to 18 years with no history of surgery with the scores of 53 children in the same age group who had undergone surgery before the age of 4. They found that children who had been exposed to anesthesia scored lower in listening comprehension and performance IQ than the other group. Researchers also found a link between the lower scores to decreased density in gray matter in the occipital cortex and cerebellum of the brain.
The anesthetics used during the surgeries included common agents such as sevoflurane, isoflurane or halothane (used alone or in combination) and nitrous oxide. Andreas Loepke, lead study author and an anesthesiologist in the Department of Anesthesiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said that parents should discuss the pros and cons of having the surgery and the risks of anesthesia exposure with their doctor. Loepke also noted that, many of the surgeries performed on children usually treat life-threatening conditions, and as such are not elective. He also pointed out that researchers are actively looking for alternative anesthetic techniques that can be used.
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