SmartTots Funds $400,000 for Pediatric Anesthesia Research
SmartTots is dedicated to funding research that will help determine if any particular anesthetic or sedative drugs pose hazards to young children, design the safest anesthetic and sedative regimes, and potentially foster the development of new practice guidelines and anesthetic drugs. In support of this goal, two research grants for $200,000 each paid over two years were recently awarded to:
Dr. Lena Sun, Columbia University Medical Center in support of the Pediatric Anesthesia NeuroDevelopment Assessment (PANDA) Study
Dr. Jeffrey Sall, University of California San Francisco in support ofRecognition Memory Following Early Childhood Anesthesia
Click here to view the full media release regarding the 2013/2014 grant awardees.
Research News & Updates
FDA Consumer Update Released: Anesthesia: Is it Safe for Young Brains?
When infants or young children need surgery, does anesthesia affect their developing brains?
With more than 1 million children under age 4 requiring anesthesia for surgery in the United States each year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health organizations are working together to answer this question. Read more
Neonatal sevoflurane anesthesia induces long-term memory impairment and decreases hippocampal PSD-95 expression without neuronal loss
Volatile anesthetics are widely used in the clinic, and sevoflurane is the most prevalent volatile anesthetic in pediatric anesthesia. Recent findings question the potential risks of volatile anesthetics on brain development. Evidence suggests that sevoflurane may cause neuronal deficiency. This study investigates the long-term effect of sevoflurane in the developing brain. Read more
Propofol-induced apoptosis of neurones and oligodendrocytes in fetal and neonatal rhesus macaque brain
Exposure of the fetal or neonatal non-human primate (NHP) brain to isoflurane or ketamine for 5 h causes widespread apoptotic degeneration of neurones, and exposure to isoflurane also causes apoptotic degeneration of oligodendrocytes (OLs). The present study explored the apoptogenic potential of propofol in the fetal and neonatal NHP brain. Read more
Ketamine as anesthetics can damage children’s learning and memory ability
Recent studies have found that anesthesia drugs have neurotoxicity on the developing neurons, causing learning and memory disorders and behavioral abnormalities. Ketamine is commonly used in pediatric anesthesia. A clinical retrospective study found that children below 3 years old who receive a long time surgery, or because of surgery require ketamine repeatedly will exhibit the performance of school-age learning and memory disorders and behavioral abnormalities. Read more
Characterization and Quantification of Isoflurane-Induced Developmental Apoptotic Cell Death in Mouse Cerebral Cortex
Accumulating evidence indicates that isoflurane and other, similarly acting anesthetics exert neurotoxic effects in neonatal animals. However, neither the identity of dying cortical cells nor the extent of cortical cell loss has been sufficiently characterized. We conducted the present study to immunohistochemically identify the dying cells and to quantify the fraction of cells undergoing apoptotic death in neonatal mouse cortex, a substantially affected brain region. Read more