Hundreds of patients in the UK reported "waking up" during surgery and said they could feel pain and hear conversations, but could neither move nor communicate with doctors, a new report has revealed.
The investigation, run by the country's leading anaesthetists, involved analysing over three million operations and found that "accidental awareness" happens in one in every 19,000 cases.
However, the experience is short-lived and generally occurs at the beginning or the end of surgery. One of the project leaders Professor Jaideep Pandit told the Daily Telegraph that in "the majority of cases the awareness only lasted a matter of seconds".
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Patients experienced feelings of dissociation, panic, fear and suffocation. "Some said they feared they had been entombed, buried alive or were dead," writes The Guardian's health editor Sarah Boseley.
Researchers found that the experience happened most often during Caesarean sections, heart and lung surgery as well as operations on patients who were obese.
Over 90 per cent of cases happened after patients had been administered an "inappropriate balance" of muscle-relaxant drugs and anaesthetics.
The report places the blame on drug administration errors, as well as organisational and individual mistakes. It found that eight out of ten cases could have been prevented.
The report also warned that patients who experience accidental awareness can suffer long-term psychological problems.
The report recommends implementing a 'checklist' procedure before surgeries as well as better approach to treating patients who have had this experience.
Prof Tim Cook, at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, who led the research, told the BBC that cases were rare but concerning. "For a small number of patients this can be a highly distressing experience," he said. "I hope this report will ensure anaesthetists pay even greater attention to preventing episodes of awareness."
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