Holy Crap! No wonder I hate doctors!

[MilesColtrane]

I only learned today that it was common practice for surgery to be performed on infants WITHOUT ANESTHESIA. (up until 20 or so years ago)

This means I had stomach surgery within the first week of life to correct a congenital defect and I was awake the whole time.

Hmm...getting sliced open and having your innards carved on, and feeling all of it. Talk about a rude introduction to the world!

[SeattleGirl]

1. Holy crap, are you kidding?

I had three major surgeries before I was three months old!

Do they think babies can't feel anything???? :wow:

[MilesColtrane]

2. I think it was a combination of fear of the effects of anesthesia...

... the belief that young babies didn't feel as much pain as they would later, and that it didn't matter because they wouldn't remember it anyway. (which I don't)


http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/02/us/study-backs-deep-anesthesia-for-babies-in-surgery.html

[Rosie1223]

3. My sister is a pediatrician so I asked her if this was true

I also had stomach surgery as an infant in 1962. Here is her response:

This is partially true.
Sad to say, I have been in practice for just a bit longer than 20 years and have direct knowledge of some of this kind of stuff. Anesthesia has been used for major surgery like you had for a long time-well over 50 years.

What the reference may have been was to minor surgeries, like circumcision, putting in chest tubes, removing skin tags, putting in central lines, stuff like that. And indeed when I trained, local anesthesia was rarely used in babies. It is used now for all but the shortest procedures-things that are likely to be shorter that the pain associated with an injection of anesthetic. This would be just in the last 10-15 years or so that this has become routine and there are still places were circumcisions are done without local anesthesia. When I was in residency, we did not use local for any procedure that we did in the neonatal intensive care unit. In my last year (1983), one of the neonatologists was starting to study the effects of all this pain on premies. (Babies that went to the OR for anything did get general anesthesia)

The thinking from the early part of the century (the last one) was that babies didn't feel pain. (Of course at the same time it was thought that babies couldn't see in color.) Then in the 50's-60's the concern was about the side effects of the anesthesia agents in use. And they were more dangerous for babies that for adults. So the risk/benefit always had to be weighed. The availability of anesthesiologists who could work with infants was likely a problem in some parts of the country-so again the risk/benefit equation would have to take that into account.

So, I would expect that you did get anesthesia for the procedure, but light and short. I doubt if you were given any kind of pain control after that, though. On the up side, they probably fed you sugar water afterwards and there is recent evidence that sucrose decreases and shortens the pain response in babies. I give it to babies before shots, if their parents want to.

And if you were awake, there was likely a very kind nurse comforting you and trying to keep a pacifier in your mouth. Surgeons don't like a lot of patient involvement in the OR.