The tag line for the new movie "Awake" promises that the film will "do for surgery what 'Jaws' did for swimming."

In other words, scare the daylights out of us. The movie centers on a man who awakens during heart surgery to find he is paralyzed and can't signal the surgical team. The technical term is anesthesia awareness.

Carol Weihrer of Reston, Va., doesn't need some Hollywood version of this phenomenon to drive home the horror that happens when anesthesia fails. Ten years after an anesthesiologist botched her anesthesia during an operation to remove her right eye, she can still recall in vivid detail the terror of the experience.

"I heard the surgeon talking to the resident, saying, 'Cut deeper and pull harder,'" she says. "I tried to scream and nothing happened. At that point I began to pray, curse, anything to tell the doctors I was awake. I finally realized I was paralyzed."

Todd Whitlock of Kansas City, Mo., was undergoing hip surgery last July when he, too, woke up on the surgical table.

"I was unable to bat an eyelash," he recalls. "I was hearing everything and knew my leg was sliced open. That scale they use for pain, grading it from one to 10? This pain was off that scale. You're screaming and screaming inside your head and nothing's coming out."

According to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which inspects the nation's hospitals, each year between 20,000 and 40,000 of the 21 million people (roughly one to two per 1,000) who receive general anesthesia experience anesthesia awareness, also called intraoperative awareness. About half of those who wake up can hear or feel what is happening to them. Almost 30 percent feel pain.

These statistics are in dispute. Anesthesiologists point to another recent large study that found an incidence of awareness much lower than the statistics cited by the Joint Commission -- more like one in 14,000 patients.

This much is known: During general anesthesia, three drugs are typically given -- a drug to put the patient to sleep, a painkiller and a paralytic that prevents them from moving. When anesthesia fails, the paralysis prevents the patient from being able to communicate this to the doctors.

The aftereffects of anesthesia awareness can be devastating. According to the Joint Commission, more than half of such patients experience psychological distress after surgery, including an "indeterminate number" with post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition more commonly associated with victims of natural disasters or soldiers returning from war.

Weihrer, who founded an advocacy group called the Anesthesia Awareness Campaign Inc., says the number who experience PTSD -- marked by nightmares, sleeping troubles, panic attacks and other psychological woes -- can be as high as 80 percent.

"There are people who lose their jobs, their families over this," says Weihrer, who a decade after her experience still cannot lie down to sleep and must sleep in a recliner. "There are people who commit suicide after experiencing awareness."

The Joint Commission issued an alert in 2004, calling anesthesia awareness an "under-recognized and under-treated" problem in health care organizations.

The incidence of awareness is likely underreported, say experts, because patients are loath to tell their doctors about it.

"I think some patients are embarrassed to talk about it because they're afraid their doctors will think they're crazy," says Peter S. Sebel, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University whose study found that 100 patients wake up every day in operating rooms across the country.

Whitlock, who has been unable to sue his anesthesiologist because he can't find a lawyer to take his case ("They say I have no 'structural damage,'" he says), blames a "brotherhood of silence" among anesthesiologists when it comes to acknowledging the problem of anesthesia awareness.

"They accuse us of dreaming or hallucinating," he says. "They've been saying that for years."


Source: Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, San Antonio Express-News

That is terrifying.

Yeah it's totally creepy... I have had lots of surgeries and it has always been a fear of mine, that something like that will happen. The not being believed part afterwards would be terrible too.

One of the things I have wondered about this is do people who have had a few prior surgeries without complications have this happen or is it generally limited to first timers under the knife? Just have not really read about that angle though I will admit I pretty much try to avoid stories that are worse than a horror film like this one!

what happens to me is that I wake up too quickly from the anesthesia because it wears off very quickly; I wake up in recovery as they are wheeling me into recovery and i can tell you every word of the conversation and I am screaming bloody murder in pain. i had surgery this summer and I told the surgeon to please make sure this did not happen to me again as it had happened in the past, and he blew me off, and yet, it happened again, during my surgery this summer. I told him off after i retold him the entire conversation, including first names of all his docs and nurses, to his surprize. i am still reluctant to have general anesthesia.

I do remember a member here who got PTSD from this, though had a hard time worrying whether or not people here believed her or not, so she went away.

that is so "tales from the crypt"-like.

luckily i've never had general anesthesia, but if i ever have to have it now i know this won't leave my mind untill it's over.

what are the causes of this? is it something that happens because of the patient or because of the way anesthesia is done, or is it a combination of both?

great article.

You can simply read more about it at: anesthesiaawareness.com

I remember that member too. If memory serves beachbum I think? After reading those stats I am really surprised only one person has posted here with that as a source of PTSD since this seems to be what nightmares are made of.

I experienced awareness during surgery a few years ago. I tried to move my hands so I could push their hands away from my stomach but couldn't move! And was also trying to breathe against the anesthetic machine very scary! I had alot of surgery prior to that with no problem. After that experience I'm petrified, I have since had more surgery but hopefully no more.

You are chemically restrained and you have no control, I can understand someone developing PTSD. I have never considered it to be the case with me.