Expert: Ronald Levy, M.D. - 2/3/2008

Question
Hi.  I just had surgery on my vocal cords under general anesthetic.  I am a 50 year old diabetic female with heart disease.  Received approval for surgery and the surgery itself went fine.  Afterwards, they had trouble waking me up and I was out between 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  They called in the Neurology team and they did bloodwork which showed that everything was out of my system and did a CT scan.  I woke up right before the scan on my own.  I was told that there was no apparent reason for me being unable  to wake up but that I should try to avoid ever having a general again.  They said I scared everyone which scares me that they don't know why this happened.  Have you heard of this happening before to other people?  Thanks for your help.

Answer
Whoever told you to not have general anesthesia again was obviously not an anesthesiologist. There is no reason to listen to them. I can't say why you didn't wake up but there are a number of possible reasons (a lot depends on the type of anesthetic agents you received). Some of the reasons are psuedocholinesterase deficiency (related to muscle relaxants), too much narcotic, length of surgery, etc.

You should certainly let any anesthesiologist in the future know what happened to you so they can take appropriate precautions.

Ronald Levy, MD
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston