Surgical Anesthesia in Young Children Linked to Effects on IQ, Brain Structure
Scientific understanding of anesthesia’s impact on young children took a significant leap forward in June, when a multi-divisional study revealed correlations to slightly lower brain function and IQ.
Researchers were quick to caution that direct causation remains unresolved, and additional studies were needed to determine anesthesia’s precise molecular effects on several functions, including language comprehension, in children who underwent surgery before age 4.
The study, published online June 8, 2015, in Pediatrics, garnered wide-ranging media coverage, including pieces in Scientific American, U.S. News and World Report and Anesthesiology News and coverage on NPR, CTV and Slate.com. Andreas Loepke, MD, PhD, of the Department of Anesthesiology, was lead author. Scott Holland, PhD, director of the Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, led the Division of Radiology’s contributions.
This new knowledge could make it possible to develop mitigating strategies for what scientists describe as a potential dilemma for child health.
“We have to better understand to what extent anesthetics and other factors contribute to learning abnormalities in children before making drastic changes to our current practice, which by all measures has become very safe,” Loepke says.
In the study, researchers compared test scores of 53 healthy participants of a language development study (ages 5 to 18 years with no history of surgery) with those of 53 children in the same age range who had undergone surgery before age 4.
The authors emphasized that average test scores for all 106 children were within population norms. Still, compared with children who had not undergone surgery, children exposed to anesthesia scored significantly lower in key areas that warrant additional examination.
Loepke, Holland and Mekbib Altaye, PhD, Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, have submitted an application to the National Institutes of Health seeking funding for a follow up study to investigate more deeply the influence of early anesthesia exposure on brain development.
