Expert: Dr Ian Jackson - please note UK based - 10/2/2007

Question
I am a 45 year old male in relative good health. I found out last May that i had prostate cancer and had , what seems to be a successful, robotic prostatectomy. Problem was the first 4-5 days after my surgery, I started having mental issues that made me have hallucinations, anxiety and in general I thought I was losing my mind. It was horrible. Someone had told me that this could have been the drugs they gave me. So just a week ago I had out-patient sinus surgery and I told them no opiates. However I still went through a similar recovery where I thought I was losing my mind, couldn't sleep, hallucinations etc. The nurse at my ENT told me she goes through a similar ordeal after anesthetic. Is it the anesthetic or something else? What can I do to avoid this horrible situation if I ever need to go under general anesthesia again?

Answer
Hi Mike
This is a difficult one to answer and I recommend you ask to speak to someone from the Anaesthetic Department at the hospital you were looked after about this.
They would need to look through the notes of the drugs you received during your anaesthesia to see if there was anything obvious that could cause this problem. One drug group that could be implicated are the 'antiemetic' i.e. antisickness drugs. In particular droperidol and haloperidol are used by some people for this and these can cause problems.
However it could be an effect of the anaesthetic itself - though again we use lots of different techniques ranging from intravenous infusions to you breathing 'gases' to keep you alseep. This is why it would be better to see what had been tried already and then agree a future treatment plan should you need an anaesthetic again in the future. It is better to do this in the cold light of day rather than in a rush if you were admitted as an emergency sometime.
I hope this makes sense. Best of luck.
Dr Ian Jackson