Anesthesia and learning: the mind-body connection.
Patient learning depends on the ability to process information during the perioperative experience. This article provides a brief review of cognition/anesthesia. It then presents findings of an exploratory study (N = 49) that looked at recognition recall, free recall, and psychomotor performance ability immediately preoperatively and 2 hours after surgery in patients having ambulatory surgery with general anesthesia. Findings showed a decrease in all three mental abilities from the preoperative to postoperative time, regardless of length of time of anesthesia administration, or number or kind of anesthetic agent.
Girard
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D000768:Anesthesia, General; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D009871:Operating Room Nursing; D010353:Patient Education as Topic