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Patients sometimes say, “Why did it take me so long to wake up after anesthesia?” when they discussed their previous anesthetic history. They are fearful that something is wrong with them, and they will always have delayed awakenings.
Certain patients have consistent bad experiences from a past general anesthetic. A previous anesthetic left them somnolent all day after surgery, and/or they felt sleepy or ill for days after a previous surgery. They wonder if they are at increased risk for anesthesia, if something went wrong in their past anesthetics, and whether they can do about it.
Whenever a patient tells me they’ve been very sensitive to anesthesia in the past, they’re always right. The good news for patients is: you probably can do something to help yourself in the future.
The most valuable thing you can do is obtain a copy of your previous anesthetic record and Post Anesthesia Recovery Room records from a surgery in which you had a perceived prolonged wake up. Save these documents and present them to future anesthesiologists. Inform future anesthesiologists regarding your history of prolonged sedation, and they can make adjustments in their drug delivery and techniques to attempt to avoid the same problems. Future anesthesiologists can administer lower doses of medications or fewer medications as they deem advisable.
The world’s foremost anesthesia textbook, Miller’s Anesthesia, does not have a specific section or chapter on the topic of avoiding prolonged wake ups. If you search the Internet or the PubMed website for a discussion of the topic “prolonged awakening from anesthesia,” you’ll find a shortage of useful information. Few papers have been published on the topic.
But every case of prolonged wake-up has its own story. General anesthetics and sedative drugs work by anesthetizing the brain and central nervous system. Based on thirty years as an anesthesiologist, the personal administration of 25,000+ anesthetics, and information from medical textbooks, what follows are lists of the primary factors which cause prolonged sedation after anesthesia.
Patient characteristics that correlate with prolonged awakening after anesthesia:
- Patients with a past history of slow awakening from anesthesia.
- Patients who are naïve to central nervous system depressants in their weekly life. That is, they never or very rarely drink alcohol, and never take sedating medications of any kind. Chronic alcohol consumption increases the dose of propofol required to induce loss of consciousness (Fassoulaki, A et al. Chronic alcoholism increases the induction dose of propofol in humans.Anesthesia and Analgesia. 1993;77(3):553-556). Conversely, patients who have zero or modest exposure to drugs like alcohol can require lower doses of anesthetic drugs.
- Patients who claim they are “sensitive to all medicines.”
- Elderly patients. As you age your ability to metabolize medications decreases. Older persons, especially those over the age of 70-80 years, require lower doses.
- Obese patients. Intravenous doses of medications are calculated according to a patient’s weight, but this number should be their lean body weight, not their weight including excess fat. Imagine two patients who are the same age and height, but one weighs 150 pounds and the second weighs 300 pounds. The second patient will need higher doses than the first, but will not require twice the dose. Markedly increasing the weight of fat cells does not mean the brain needs twice the dose of medications.
- Petite patients. What if an anesthesia provider administers his or her standard recipe for anesthesia without noticing that their current patient only weighs 88 pounds? Standard doses for a 150-pound person will be excessive in an 88-pound patient.
- Patients with decreased function of one or more of the major organ systems, that is the heart, lungs, liver, or kidney. Depending on the medication, one or more of these organ systems are required to clear the drug from the body. A patient with heart failure or decreased cardiac output will not be able to pump the drug efficiently throughout the body to the lungs, liver, or kidneys to clear the drug. A patient with decreased lung function/ventilation will not be able to exhale vapor anesthetics promptly. A patient with decreased liver function will not be able to clear certain drugs like narcotics from the body promptly. A patient with decreased kidney function will not be able to clear paralyzing drugs such as the muscle relaxant rocuronium from the body promptly.
- Patients with an abnormal brain. For example, patients with dementia, delirium, congenital developmental delay, or any organic brain syndrome may experience increased post-operative sedation due to exaggerated effects of the anesthetic medications on their brains.
Medical circumstances that contribute to prolonged patient awakening after anesthesia:
- The longer the surgery and anesthetic duration, the longer the wake up time. This is because the longer exposure to anesthetic drugs requires a longer time to exhale the vapor drugs or to clear and metabolize the intravenous drugs.
- The more complex the surgery, the longer the wake up time. Certain surgeries, for example a liver transplant, are so complex that an anesthesiologist often plans to keep the patient asleep in the intensive care unit after the surgery until the first post-operative day.
- An inexperienced anesthetist may resort to a standard recipe for every patient, and administer a more heavy-handed concoction of anesthetic drugs than are necessary for patients in our first list above.
- Painful surgery. Any surgery which hurts a great deal will require increased pain-relieving medications in the Post Anesthesia Recovery Room. Pain-relieving medications include narcotics such as morphine or fentanyl, which are sedating and sometimes nauseating. The less of these medicines you require, the more alert you’ll feel. Local anesthetic injections by the surgeon or a regional anesthesia nerve block by the anesthesiologist can decrease your need for narcotics, decrease post-operative pain, and decrease your risk of prolonged sedation after surgery.
You have little control over the drugs you’ll be given during surgery, but please inform and remind your anesthesiologist regarding any characteristics from the first list above. An honest discussion of your previous bad anesthetic experience(s), together with obtaining a copy of a previous anesthetic record(s), may grant you some control regarding how sedated you feel after future anesthetic experiences.
YOU are your own best advocate. Don’t be afraid to inform your anesthesiologist.
I refer you to a related column, HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME TO WAKE UP FROM GENERAL ANESTHESIA?
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I have surgery on my c5c6c7 with acdf fusion I went down at 11am but did not return back on the ward until 6.25 pm is there any reason why it would have taken so long for me to wake up. I didn’t get to ask my surgeon why as I was discharge the next day with out getting to see him.
There are multiple reasons for delayed recovery from general anesthesia: some patients are more sensitive to the medications, some surgeries require higher doses of narcotics and pain medications, and some anesthesia providers are more liberal with higher doses of anesthesia drugs. The postoperative period is often a blur with a lost sense of time for many patients. If your outcome was excellent, I would not be concerned. If you can obtain a copy of the anesthesia record, you could present that record to future anesthesiologists with the tale that this anesthesia recipe resulted in a delayed wakeup.
I had surgery on my c5c6c7 with acdf fusion I went down at 11am but did not return back to. On the ward until 6.25 pm is there any reason why It would have taken so long for me to wake up. I didn’t get to ask my surgeon why as I was discharge the next day with out getting to see him
My step father had ohs 10 days ago and still hasn’t woken up… Dr’s think he may have had a stroke but the Ct scan didn’t reveal one. His surgery started through the groin and ended up through the chest cavity after the Dr tore my dad’s heart and had to do emergency repair surgery through the chest and then once stable he replaced the valve.. Dad is still on the ventilator and their talking about doing a trach this coming Monday. Dad has responded by sticking out his tongue for Dr but that was 3 days ago. Not sure what to think or if there’s any hope now…
Brandi,
My prayers are with you. Heart surgery either through the groin or through the chest has serious risks. His recovery will depend on what the diagnosis is regarding his current condition, and what the prognosis is for that diagnosis. Many people recover from these circumstances. It depends on the cause. Hang in there.
I enjoyed the article, however you failed to mention the most common cause of a slow wake up–annoyed nursing staff and anesthesia provider. Patients that exhibit behaviors outside of the norm of situational anxiety tend to get midazolam early, often and in abundance. Verbal skills to calm behaviorally challenged patients and or less aggressive midazolam dosing significantly reduces the complaint of a slow wake up. I supervise close to 7,000 independent ambulatory anesthetics and perform 900 peripheral nerve blocks per year in our center and have found that low or no versed reduces that complaint significantly. Verbal skills and patience…
I have had a problem with delayed waking up as well. My Daughter and nurses informed me that they couldn’t wake me up but, the next day I notice a round patch of missing hair very close to my temple rather behind my temple and looked to have been poked with a needle or something. My question is there a possibility that like they mentioned to me that I have them a good scare that they perhaps injected my brain to wake me ? Or what is the next procedure in a situation as this?
There’s no known procedure of an injection into a temple that would either awaken you or make you markedly sleepy. I’m not sure what that round patch represented.
I had a twilight anaesthesia the other day to have a minor procedure done I went totally out at 2:00 pm and woke up at 5:00 can anybody tell me why I was asleep for so long pls ?
“Twilight sedation” is usually synonymous with “conscious sedation.”
Conscious sedation often contains IV midazolam (Versed), which is a drug in the Valium family, which causes amnesia. Even if patients are intermittently awake, they may not remember anything because of the Versed.
In addition, if a conscious sedation patient is sensitive to their sedation, he or she may doze off and be unconscious for much of the sedation time, and therefore not recall anything.