Annotated Bibliography

Analyzing the psychological damage from Anesthesia Awareness

Elisabeth Patterson

Professor Malcom Campbell

Honors UWRT 1103- H03

16 October 2019
Bischoff, Petra, and Ingrid Rundshagen. “Awareness under general anesthesia.” Deutsches
Arzteblatt international vol. 108,1-2 (2011): 1-7. doi:10.3238/a

This Academic Journal explains the science behind awareness, and what goes wrong in

order for awareness to occur. This study found that awareness only occurs for two out of

1000 operations using general anesthesia. They surveyed patients after their surgeries

asking questions such as if they heard of felt anything during the duration of their

surgery. They also got information on if these patients had any diseases, their moods

before surgery, and other things to see if they were possible risk factors. They later

explain the multitude of complications that awareness can lead to, such as PTSD,

anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, and thoughts of suicide.

This journal was published in the US National Library of Medicine’s database. Their

headquarters are located in Maryland, and has been open since 1896. It is a government

funded organization, and the journals published are all by credible researchers. From my

research, this institution holds no biases.

One of the authors, Petra Bischoff got her degree from Technische Universität München,

(TUM), one of Europe’s top research universities.

This source is going to be one of my most important for my research. It will help me

understand how awareness actually occurs, and how that can affect the brain in response.

It also gives me actual data on how often awareness occurs, and who is the most at risk.

Overall, the point of my research is to inform those who haven’t heard of awareness, and

help educate everyone who will go under general anesthesia for surgery of the risk

factors for awareness.

Landau, Elizabeth. “Awake during Surgery: 'I'm in Hell'.” CNN, Cable News Network, 17 May
2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/17/general.anesthesia/index.html.

This news source interviews a woman who actually experience awareness. In 1998,

Carol Weiher was having surgery to have her right eye removed, when the medical

mishap occurred. She heard the surgeon discussing removing her eye, and she actually

felt every incision. In her head she was screaming and crying for them to stop, but her

entire body was paralised. Since her experience, it’s almost impossible for her to go

under for other operations. She now takes medicine for PTSD, which is a direct result of

her awareness during her eye removal surgery. The article goes on to cite a 2008 study

in the New England Journal of Medicine, which discusses one of the solutions to

awareness, which is monitoring brain activity. If a patient is experiencing awareness, it

can be detected because their brain activity and heart rate will increase dramatically. The

main issue with this is most hospitals have not implemented these practices because of

the hefty price tag these machines have.

CNN is a well known highly left-leaning news source. Despite this bias, there is nothing

in this article to indicate that this bias is present. Because it doesn’t involve politics in

the slightest, that bias is not present. All of the medical data they discussed comes from

academic journals which also indicates that those aspects are credible.

The author of this article, Elizabeth Landau, at this time worked as writer/ producer of

CNN. She got her undergraduate degree at Princeton University, and then went to

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Landau now works as a Senior

Storyteller for NASA, writing and editing for the NASA website. From her education to

her years of experience, this leads me to believe the information in the article is reliable.

This source will be beneficial to my research, because the women interviewed gives my

work an inside view into what experiencing awareness is truly like. She also developed

PTSD from her awareness, which links directly back to the question I am researching:

To what extent does Anesthesia Awareness affect a patient's postoperative psychological

health?

Christopher Fong

I would give more background on the author 

Make sure to answer all the questions. I feel like you left out some important ones.