Expert: Ronald Levy, M.D. - 1/8/2012

Question
I have an acoustic neuroma and have to choose a course of treatment. I feel like I'm comparing apples to artichokes! On the one hand I have major neurosurgery and on the other a gamma knife treatment.

I believe I've figured out what the various risks are, all except one: I can't find any resources to help me figure out the mortality rate under anesthesia. I want to calculate the risk for me, specifically, taking into account my age, weight (which is a factor for determining the quantity of anesthesia to administer), and the length of time I will be under anesthesia (5-8 hours approximately for the surgery) and my health risks (hypertension, mild asthma - that I know tend to drive the mortality under anesthesia rate up). Is there an online calculator where I could plug in my personal information and work this out? Any tables I could use to work it out on my own?

Answer
There is no calculator for anesthesia risk. The fact is that anesthesia is actually one of the safest medical fields there is. Most people are worried about the anesthesia risks when they should be more worried about the surgical risks (which are low for acoutis neuroma, in general). Your risk factors are actually not that bad so your mortality risk from anesthesia is probably 1:100,000 and morbidity maybe 1:10,000. But anesthesiologists don't think that way. We weigh the risks and change our anesthetics and monitoring choices to minimize that risk.

Ronald Levy, MD
Professor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston