Patient Awareness Under General Anaesthesia During Laparoscopic Surgeries: A Prospective Cross Sectional Study In Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Laparoscopy procedure is becoming increasingly popular in developing countries. All open surgeries can be done laparoscopically. This largely depends on the skill of the laparoscopic surgeon. Some studies have shown that general anesthesia is the most preferred form of anesthesia during laparoscopy. General anesthesia provides a state of complete amnesia and unconsciousness during surgery but usually not the case in some individuals. This was a prospective cross- sectional study that was carried out to assess the level of patients' awareness under general anaesthesia during laparoscopic surgery. The study included patients who underwent laparoscopic surgery using general anesthesia over a twelve months period. Information was obtained using a self administered questionnaire done between the first and second postoperative day. The questionnaire had two sections. The first sections contained information about socio- demographic details of the participants, and the second part entailed those that could remember events during the surgery weather completely or partially, and the extracted data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. Eighty five patients took part in the study. Sixty three (74.1%) patients were within the reproductive age group and nulliparity made up 37(43.6%). Most of the patients with chronic medical conditions as hypertension accounted for more than two thirds of the patients in that category. Awareness under anesthesia was noticed in 12(14.1%) of the study population. Our study found that more participants who became aware of their environment had chronic medical conditions compared to those who were not aware of theirs (p <0.001). Doses of anaesthetic agents should be balanced with individual patients especially those with severe pre-morbid states after ruling out human and instrumental errors.