Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned:
Pregnant women or children who experience multiple or long-term (more than 3 hours) general anesthesia or use sedative drugs may affect the intellectual development of the fetus or children under 3 years old.
A bolt from the blue! Anesthesia really affects intelligence!
Ladies and gentlemen, don’t worry. Dr. Clove invited an anesthesiologist to tell you in detail about the baby’s anesthesia.
The situation that the baby needs anesthesia.
In some cases, the baby needs to be anesthetized to cooperate with examination and treatment.
1. Inspections requiring complete cooperation
This anesthesia is only to give some sedative drugs so that the baby can cooperate with the examination after falling asleep. For example, MRI, hearing test, etc., sedative anesthesia may be required.
This anesthesia lasts for a short time, so parents do not need to worry about affecting the baby’s future intellectual development.
2. Surgery requiring local anesthesia
Local anesthesia is only applied locally.
For example, the baby naughty hurt himself, need debridement suture small surgery needs local anesthesia, sometimes need to cooperate with a short period of sedative drugs. When the drug only acts on the local, sedation time is also short, will not affect the child’s future intellectual development.
On the contrary, if you don’t use anesthetic and force suture, you may leave a psychological shadow on your child.
3. Surgery requiring general anesthesia
The most common are male baby hernia, circumcision, or otolaryngology tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy or esophageal and airway foreign bodies such as routine surgery. There are also a few relatively large cardiac surgery or brain surgery operations.
The narcotic drugs needed for such operations are basically on the FDA’s list of possible mental impairment to children.
That’s what the warning says
The FDA’s attitude is this:
Repeated or prolonged use of general anesthesia and sedative drugs may affect the child’s brain development in children under three years of age or in women in the last three months of pregnancy.
Doctors need to weigh the risks and advantages and disadvantages of surgery for young children and pregnant women, especially when the surgery time may exceed 3 hours, or children under 3 years old need multiple surgeries, they should discuss with the parents of the children.
Dr. Clove knocked on the blackboard. The key words in this warning are:
Infants under 3 years old, pregnant women in the last 3 months of pregnancy, have undergone multiple operations, and the operation time exceeds 3 hours.
The baby needs surgery, can he still be anesthetized?
This requires parents and doctors to discuss and judge together.
1. Emergency or limited operation
These operations are not allowed, such as incarcerated hernia, brain tumor, congenital heart disease, intestinal obstruction, bone trauma, etc. Delaying time will delay the illness.
2. Delayed elective surgery
Some elective operations that can be postponed are recommended for mothers to postpone such operations until the baby is 3 years old.
Through the doctor’s explanation, Dr. Clove believes that parents should have clearly understood FDA’s tips and how to weigh the risks of anesthesia surgery ~