THE impact of anesthesia on the developing brain continues to be hotly debated. In this issue, Hu et al.,1 from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, report an association between childhood exposure to multiple anesthetics and increased risk of learning disability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study uses a well-established birth cohort and is similar to two studies published previously by the same Mayo Clinic group.2,3 The earlier studies were criticized for including children who were anesthetized in an era that relied on somewhat outdated drugs and monitoring. The study reported in this issue included children anesthetized with more contemporary agents and monitoring. The results are almost identical to the previous studies. All find an association between exposure to anesthesia in early childhood and subsequent diagnosis of learning disability and/or ADHD, and the associations were stronger with multiple exposures compared with single exposures.
Recent Posts
- A Scoping Review of the Mechanisms Underlying Developmental Anesthetic Neurotoxicity
- 2025 Annual Meeting, presented by the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) and the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA), March 20 – 23, 2025, Honolulu, HI
- Exposure to Operative Anesthesia in Childhood and Subsequent Neurobehavioral Diagnoses: A Natural Experiment Using Appendectomy
- Long-term outcomes of early exposure to repeated general anaesthesia in children with cystic fibrosis (CF-GAIN): a multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled phase 4 trial. Claire Elizabeth Wainwright, et al. June 2024
- Columbia University Physician Scientist and SmartTots Investigator, Caleb Ing, MD, publishes new findings regarding prenatal exposure to general anesthesia and subsequent risk to the child.