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The Korea Herald
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THE INVESTOR
March 29, 2024

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Korean scientists find clue to anesthesia awareness

  • PUBLISHED :August 04, 2017 - 16:22
  • UPDATED :August 04, 2017 - 16:22
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[THE INVESTOR] A team of Korean scientists has recently found a clue to preventing one of the most horrifying fears of surgery patients, being awake during surgery, according to POSTECH on Aug. 4.

One or two people in every 1,000 may wake up during general anesthesia and experience severe pain that sometimes requires treatment for post-traumatic stress disorders. 




POSTECH said its researchers, in partnership with Seoul Asan Hospital, have succeeded in analyzing the level of awareness in general anesthesia that would finally help better monitoring of patients during surgery.

They use the physics concept “entropy,” the degree of disorder in a system, to analyze time-varying patterns of brain waves during the whole process of anesthesia. In a study on 96 patients under anesthesia, they found their awareness loss was closely linked to the brain entropy patterns.

“This is the first time to calculate the level of awareness in general anesthesia. This method shows more accurate process of consciousness loss compared to any other existing methods,” said Lee Heon-soo, physics professor at POSTECH and the lead researcher.

Some anesthesiologists say brain function monitors can help prevent surgical awakening but the downsides are that they are expensive and should not be used in place of heart rate and breathing signals when regulating anesthesia.

The school said the team has already started developing a new awareness monitoring system along with a Korean equipment manufacturer.

Their study is expected to be published in the September issue of Human Brain Mapping, a renowned neuroscience journal. 

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)

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