Bates County Memorial Hospital now provides brain monitoring to patients undergoing anesthesia in the Surgery Department through the use of a BIS Monitor. This monitor is a medical device that measures your brain wave activity, and provides the anesthetist with information regarding your brain during surgery, anesthesia and sedation.

 What happens when a patient is placed under anesthesia?

            Under general anesthesia, a patient is given medications intended to cause unconsciousness and relieve pain. As all patients respond differently to medications, the medication to render the patient unconscious may fail and awareness occurs. In other words, the patient wakes up, becomes aware of certain events occurring during the surgery, and may recall some or all of the events. Further, if the medication to relieve pain fails or is inadequate, the patient may feel pain while awake. All patients respond differently to medications.

Does BIS Monitoring help prevent awareness?

            Recent studies have demonstrated that using a BIS monitor during your operation is an effective method to decrease your chance of awareness. Use of a BIS monitor reduces the frequency of awareness more than 5-fold. BIS monitoring helps the anesthetist recognize those periods of an operation when you need more anesthesia medication to stay asleep, or identify potential problems with the anesthesia medications getting into your body.

 How is BIS Monitoring used during anesthesia?

            In order for the BIS monitor to measure your brain activity, the brain waves inside your head need to be recorded. To do this, a special strip of electrodes is placed on your forehead and then connected via a cable to the brain monitor. By having the information from your brain that tells the anesthetist how you are responding to the medications, the anesthetist can change the amount of medication to be certain you are not getting too much or too little anesthesia.

 Patients should NOT be afraid!

            The remote possibility of experiencing awareness should not deter patients from having needed surgery. Awareness under anesthesia is very rare. However, statistics show one in 10,000 patients may experience awareness.

 Modern surgery is only possible through the miracle of anesthesia. Bates County Memorial Hospital continues its mission to provide quality patient care to the community it serves. If you would like additional information concerning the surgery and anesthesia services available at Bates County Memorial Hospital in Butler, MO please contact the Surgery Department at 660-200-7035.

 Source:     American Association of Nurse Anesthetists  www.aana.com

                Aspect medical Systems   www.aspectmedical.com