3 ms·

I'm inclined to chalk this up to false memories. Especially if someone is going in with nervousness or awareness that "waking up without being able to alert the

• throwanem 6y ago
  It should be easy to disprove false memory, I'd think, at least in the case of procedures that are recorded. Ask the patient what they remember happening, and compare with the recording to see if those things did occur or didn't. I'm not inclined to assume every report of this happening is due to false memory, which is itself a somewhat controversial topic. As the article points out but is not even slightly novel in saying, we don't have a firm understanding of why general anesthesia works, just that it does. That's good enough to be going on with, but not yet understanding the mechanism at work means it's reasonable to expect we also don't yet have perfect knowledge of why and when it doesn't work perfectly, and there is therefore nothing implausible about there being rare outliers such as those under discussion here.
  • andix 6y ago
    Doctors usually talk during (some parts of ) the surgery. About whatever is on their mind. If the patient can recite some details about that, it's probably not false memory.
    • t0mas88 6y ago
      I've read a story some years ago about a patient that didn't have any pain but did have some vague memories about the procedure that he should not have had if he was fully under. The patient was able to describe the topics of informal small talk during their procedure.
• istorical 6y ago
  It's a known phenomenon not a mythological creature like bigfoot. Dentists for example often have to re-administer anesthesia mid-procedure when a patient wakes up mid-wisdom tooth extraction for example.
  • nerdponx 6y ago
    This is conscious sedation, not general anesthesia. Different animal.
• stephenhuey 6y ago
  Check out the sibling comment in which lr4444lr recounts taking a secret audio recording device into surgery.