Awareness during anesthesia implies that during a period of intended general anesthesia, the brain is aroused by stimuli that are stored in memory for future explicit recall. It has an estimated incidence between 0.007-0.91. Thus, with over 20 million general anesthetics performed yearly in the United States, the occurrence can be striking. Consequently, in 2004, The Joint Commission issued an alert stating that anesthesia awareness is an "under-recognized and under-treated" problem in health care organizations. The incidence in trauma patients is even more alarming and has been shown to range from 11-43% in various studies.
For the 20 million patients wheeled into surgical suites across the US every year, general anesthesia will be given without incident. Still, 1 in 1000 patients will experience anesthesia awareness every year. Researchers have tried to figure out who is most likely to be at risk for the event, but few factors have emerged.
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