Patients who get a lot of support from family and doctors while in intensive care are less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, officials said.

A German study surveyed patients almost five years after they suffered from a severe respiratory disease called acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Researchers found that those who felt they were supported during their illness were not at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Those who did not think they had support showed a greater tendency to remember pain, reported more psychological problems and were at an increased risk for PTSD, researchers said.

Source: WBAL Channel

thanks anthony for raising this issue (& so much other really useful info for us on these pages) of acute respiratory distress, i'd never heard of this & it sounded so similar to my trauma, (suffocation) looked it up. found another article (don't know how to attach it but have it on desktop) called:Article


Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Health-Related Quality of Life in Long-Term Survivors of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Hans P. Kapfhammer, M.D., Ph.D., Hans B. Rothenhäusler, M.D., Till Krauseneck, M.D., Christian Stoll, M.D. and Gustav Schelling, M.D.
it describes patients' experience as 'immediate threat of death by suffocation...this destructive experience is potentiated by the continued limited ability to communicate and the lack of possibilities to flee' - same as during anaesthetic awareness happening during use of paralysing muscle-relaxants.

an article i found recently:

Awareness During Surgery Leaves Emotional Scars
General anesthesia, although an obvious boon to modern surgery, fails to completely knock out a small percentage of patients, many of whom go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder from the pain, horror and helplessness of the experience.
A study of 16 of these so-called "awareness" patients found that more than half of them had PTSD, while none of the 10 patients who were not awake during their surgery developed the psychiatric disorder.
Awareness under general anesthesia is estimated to happen to 0.2 percent to 0.7 percent of surgery patients, affecting between 40,000 and 140,000 patients a year.
"Most post-awareness subjects reported lapsing in and out of consciousness, picking up fragments of the surgery, conversations and bodily sensation while struggling to move, escape and communicate. These memories reappeared later as vivid images, sensations, isolated thoughts and intense emotions that are characteristic of PTSD," says lead author Jane E. Osterman, M.D., M.S., of Boston University School of Medicine.
The subjects in this study reported an inability to communicate during their surgery as well as intense feelings of helplessness, terror, feeling unsafe, fear of pain, pain and paralysis. They also reported that they had felt abandoned or betrayed by their doctors and nurses. Following surgery, the awareness patients continued to suffer from feelings of being unsafe, terror, helplessness, the inability to communicate, betrayal and abandonment.

see how close these 2 are, the anaesthetic awareness & respiratory distress syndrome? interesting, i don't know how frequently this respiratory distress occurs, but i would bet it's far less frequent than anaesthetic awareness, quoted here at 0.2-0.7% of all general anaesthetics, quite a lot of patients (like me) are out here but nobody has heard of it and it is still being denied & covered-up by most hospitals. of course patients need to have faith & confidence in proposed surgery but at what cost? when it does happen (and you wake paralysed, unable to breathe etc with a tube down your throat) not knowing what is happening & why add enormously to the extreme terror you're experiencing. should doctors worldwide warn patients of anaesthetic awareness? (they do in the USA now), should patients be told pre-op that they will have a tube put down their throat, they will be paralysed and they will not be able to breathe for themselves? at present it is extremely rare to tell patients that this will happen during their anaesthetic, would this knowledge put patients off surgery? CAN patients give informed consent to their anaesthetic without this knowledge? just wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of people out here are living with PTSD because of anaesthetic awareness & many are too disturbed to be able to seek/get proper help either with the PTSD or information that could help them understand their trauma. (especially when hospitals deny it ever happened and tell patients it was a 'dream' so patients then think they themselves must be crazy, (very dangerous!). it might be helpful to add anaesthetic awareness to this forum's 'what is traumatic enough for PTSD' as the a/a group is very likely much larger than most people know!

I am sorry to hear about your trauma. As for my own experience, been to numerous surgeries, some I was fully awake due to some treatment reasons. I was glad to be informed of the procedures and of what to expect on the surgery day. And as for my side, I always look up for extra information from the Internet just to equip myself better and to lessen my own fear. I made sure I had no more doubts concerning the surgery. Maybe it did really help.

Last year, I had 2 separate Facet joint injections for my back pain. I was fully awake in assisting and answering questions throughout in the surgery theatre. I was tenser in the first treatment though I was given an injection just to calm me down throughout the ordeal. I was supposed to feel the pain and I had to stop all painkillers for 24 hours before it. It’s a procedure to locate the exact pain location with the help of live x-ray while the doctor inject into my spine at different depth, starting at the skin, muscle and then into the spine facets itself. I saw everything on the x-ray monitor as the needle went deeper. I was to feedback of the pain intensity and relief if any at all stages. A procedure to numb at various stages.

I also underwent a posterior cataract eye surgery last year. I was born with it and it was not a usual procedure back then but it’s now a minor surgery, a day surgery in fact. I was also awake and in fact chatting with my ophthalmologist throughout the 30 minutes procedures. He told me the progress and similarly I was to assist by moving my eye left or right up or down. I was feeling ok.

I still remember fragments of my spine surgery 16 years ago. I was well informed of the surgery and I was expected to follow some instruction half way through the surgery, to make sure things went well. I was supposed to move my toes as told. I remembered being told not to fight the tube inside my throat and heard some conversation before and during the surgery. I also remembered the anesthetist and everyone had a hard time trying to find a suitable vein for the drips, I was too thin at that time. They searched and tried for more than half an hours, even trying their luck at my legs. In the end it was my spine surgeon who succeeded in finding one himself after the rest had failed. I was afraid of the surgery but it did not left me traumatize except the post surgery pain. Maybe I had great trust in the surgeon myself and was well informed ahead of what to expect during and after the surgery.

traumatized, nope, why should you be? - it isn't the just being awake! or even pain, (had kids = had pain), no, you were lucky, your anaesthtists didn't make any errors. if you were told to move your toes you weren't paralysed with a muscle-relaxant, and they had allowed you to wake so you were able to breathe through the tube yourself or they had kept it breathing for you gently while awake. in my case, i was totally paralysed with those relaxants (can't breathe for yourself at all), meant to be asleep, and they were supposed to be using the machine correctly to breathe for me, result 'awake paralysis with suffocation', all the while hearing them talk about me (they didn't know i was listening), unable to breathe & they didn't know and i couldn't tell them - for too long. that was the terror... very different from yours!