3 - Anesthesia, Amnesia and Recall

Summary

This chapter discusses whether and in what respects patients who experience intraoperative awareness with recall can be harmed by it. The chapter considers psychological and pharmacological interventions that might prevent, weaken or erase memories of intraoperative awareness. When awareness is detected during surgery, mechanisms of memory encoding and consolidation may be difficult to reverse. Intervening in the brain to erase memories already consolidated is even more difficult. If a patient recalls being aware days or weeks after surgery, then the memory may be resistant to modification. Nevertheless, memory research and actual cases indicate that these memories can be prevented by administering consolidation-blocking drugs to induce anterograde amnesia. It is also theoretically possible for reconsolidation-blocking drugs to induce retrograde amnesia and eliminate memories of awareness.