Word: anesthesia
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...Wilder and his colleagues are also cautious about their results because the data do not make clear whether it was the anesthesia that contributed to the children's learning deficits or whether it was an underlying condition that may have required surgery and precipitated the learning problems. Of the more than 5,000 babies studied, 593 needed at least one surgery and just over 100 infants needed more than two before age 3. There may have been something unusual about this population of children that made them vulnerable to learning problems and required them to undergo surgery and anesthesia...
...results reignite a long-standing controversy over the impact of anesthesia on still developing minds and bodies. The hazards were documented in earlier studies of animals: for example, rat studies have repeatedly shown that animals exposed to anesthesia drugs in the first seven days of life - when nerve cells are forming and connecting to the larger neural network - develop problems performing maze exercises, which require memory and reasoning skills. In the 1960s, based on similar concerns over possible injury to a baby's immature nervous system, doctors advocated only light anesthesia or none at all for infants undergoing surgery. Some...
...Olmstead County, Minn., researchers tracked the number of operations each youngster underwent before age 4, as well as his or her scores on reading, writing and math tests, administered once a year from elementary school through high school. Infants who had just one exposure to anesthesia showed no greater risk of having learning problems by age 19, but those with two or more exposures had a 60% increased chance of developing a learning disability compared with babies who had not had any operations. Three or more exposures to anesthesia by age 3 doubled children's risk of having difficulty...
...that anesthesia may also put babies at greater risk for cognitive problems later in life, according to Wilder's latest findings. The author is quick to point out, however, that the data are preliminary and do not necessarily suggest a direct or definitive causal link between anesthesia and learning disabilities, only an association. "We clearly have not demonstrated that anesthetics are the cause of learning disability," says Wilder. "We don't want this to alarm the public to the point they aren't giving children appropriate medical care." It could be dangerous to deny children surgery to spare them...
...perhaps. But it does highlight the need for future research. While the study does not establish a direct link between anesthesia and learning disabilities, it doesn't rule one out. The babies who underwent surgery in the Mayo study were treated for a wide range of conditions, few of which were brain-related. By far, the most common procedure performed on the infants involved the insertion of tubes in the ears to remove fluid to prevent hearing loss and potential delays in speech and language skills; 26% of the babies undergoing surgery fell into this category. One-quarter...