New study says surgery, anesthesia may affect memory

NewsBharati    22-Feb-2018
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Madison, January 22: Have you ever gone through any surgery or anesthesia? There’s a slight chance that you might suffer from lower memory than who have never through such medical process. A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has come up with the result.

The study was conducted involving 312 participants who underwent a surgery and 652 participants who had not. Memory became abnormal in 77 out of 670 participants with initially normal memory comprising 18% of those who had had surgery compared with 10% of those who had not. No differences in other measures of memory and executive function were observed between participants having and not having surgery.

"The cognitive changes we report are highly statistically significant in view of the internal normative standards we employ, and the large sample size of the control, or non-surgery, population. But the cognitive changes after surgery are small—most probably asymptomatic and beneath a person's awareness," said senior author Dr. Kirk Hogan, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

"The results await confirmation both in follow-up investigations in our own population sample after more surgeries in aging participants and by other investigators with other population samples." Dr. Hogan said but warned that it is too early to recommend any changes in clinical practice regarding prevention, diagnosis, management, and prognosis of cognitive changes after surgery.

Surgery Anesthesia Medical issues Memory