ASA Gives Brain Monitors Lukewarm Endorsement
Awareness Victim Wants Routine Use of Monitors
A woman who has dedicated her life to preventing anesthesia awareness was hoping for better news than she received at the American Society of Anesthesiologists' annual meeting last month in Atlanta. Carol Weihrer, who claims she was awake but unable to speak or move while surgeons removed her diseased right eye in 1998, wanted the ASA to endorse routine use of brain monitors during surgery that requires general anesthesia. What she got was far less. The ASA approved the group's first practice advisory that acknowledges anesthesia awareness as a condition that might occur at a rate of between 1 and 2 in every 1,000 surgeries done under general anesthesia, but stopped short of endorsing the use of brain monitors, instead leaving that decision to individual practitioners.