Surgical Anesthesia in Young Children Linked to Effects on IQ, Brain Structure
June 11th, 2015Via: Science Daily:
Children who received general anesthesia for surgery before age 4 had diminished language comprehension, lower IQ and decreased gray matter density in posterior regions of their brain, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.
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Loepke and his research colleagues have published previous studies showing widespread cell death, permanent deletion of neurons and neurocognitive impairment in laboratory rats and mice after exposure to general anesthesia. Those studies have raised concerns about similar effects in young children during a particularly sensitive neurodevelopmental period in early life, which researchers say could interfere with the refinement of neuronal networks and lead to long-term functional abnormalities.
For their current retrospective study, the authors compared the scores of 53 healthy participants of a language development study (ages 5 to 18 years with no history of surgery) with the scores of 53 children in the same age range who had undergone surgery before the age of 4.
The authors stress that average test scores for all 106 children in the study were within population norms, regardless of surgical history. Still, compared with children who had not undergone surgery, children exposed to anesthesia scored significantly lower in listening comprehension and performance IQ. Researchers also report that decreased language and IQ scores were associated with lower gray matter density in the occipital cortex and cerebellum of the brain.
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Extending their study a step beyond the medical data, the research team also considered the potential societal impact of their findings. Earlier research from 2008 had estimated the loss of 1 IQ point to decrease a person’s lifetime earnings potential by $18,000. Factoring in the potential loss of 5 or 6 IQ points found in their current study, the researchers report that, based on the estimated 6 million children who undergo surgery in the United States each year the lifetime potential earnings loss could total $540 billion.
