Surgery for a very young child is never trivial for him or his parents. In addition to the emphasis that the latter may legitimately feel in the face of intervention, questions about anesthesia are sometimes added. Babies are usually sedated to make the surgery easier because they move around too much to be operated on under local anesthesia only. This does not prevent the profession from thinking about the possible effects of anesthetics on the brains of young patients for twenty years.
A recent French study attempted to answer the question of the behavioral and anatomical effects of general anesthesia in children by creating two parts of the study (one on animals, one on children). At first, experiments were conducted on laboratory mice. In rodents repeatedly exposed to the anesthetic gas (isoflurane), a certain area of the brain…
Source: Le Figaro
