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Repeated use of general anesthesia in childhood can lead to mental problems in the future.
Every year, many children under four years of age undergo surgery under general anesthesia (for example, about a million a year in the United States). Several long-term studies have shown an association between multiple anesthesia and future learning problems. Animal experiments (mainly rodents) have shown that general anesthesia in early childhood leads to brain cell death and mental problems in the future.
However, much remained unclear, in particular, it was not completely clear whether the anesthesia itself had a negative effect, or whether some other factors associated with surgical operations also affected. The disadvantage of rodent experiments was that the early development of their brains is very different from the development of the human brain.
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Mount Sinai School of Medicine (USA), together with the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (USA), conducted a similar study on monkeys, whose brain development process is very similar to that of humans. In particular, the stage of brain development in macaques at the age of 6 weeks corresponds to that of a human infant in the second half of life.
The researchers applied general anesthesia to 10 monkeys three times – on the seventh day of life and then after two and four weeks. For this, a drug was used that is usually used in pediatric anesthesiology, the effect of anesthesia lasted about 4 hours (the duration of a typical operation). At the same time, unlike previous studies, no surgical procedures were performed with experimental animals.
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When the macaques were 6 months old, the scientists assessed their social-emotional behavior. For this, a standard test was used – a stranger approached a cage with a monkey and behaved “menacingly”. Anesthetized macaques were much more frightened than control animals.
The researchers emphasize that any external influence on the brain in the early stages of development can affect many different functions that will develop later.
Since in most cases only emergency operations are performed on young children, the solution may be the development of new drugs for anesthesia or methods for preventing and protecting the brain during anesthesia.
Подробнее см J. Raper et al. «Multiple anesthetic exposure in infant monkeys alters emotional reactivity to an acute stressor», Anesthesiology, August 2015.