Incidence of Accidental Awareness with Recall during General Anaesthesia: A Prospective Observational Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital.

Background Accidental awareness during general anaesthesia, though rare, is a serious issue. It could lead to potential harmful psychological consequences. It has been reported that general surgical population has an incidence of awareness ranging from 0.1 to 0.2%. Objective To determine the incidence of awareness with recall under general anaesthesia by using modified Brice questionnaire in post-operative care unit. Method This was an observational study conducted on adult patients in a tertiary care hospital. A modified Brice questionnaire was used for the post-operative interview in 1,120 patients following the written informed consent. They were of American society of anaesthesiologists' physical status I to III and had surgeries under general anaesthesia. The incidence of intraoperative awareness with recall was the primary outcome of the study. Result Among the total 1,120 patients, 678 patients were female and 442 were males. Most patients, 785 were of American society of anaesthesiologists' physical status I, while 316 were II and 19 were III. While 1071 (95.6%) patients underwent elective surgery, 49 (4.3%) patients had emergency surgeries. The mean age of the study population was 40.31years with standard deviation of 12.12. Of the 1120 patients, two of them had definitive awareness. Conclusion The incidence of intraoperative awareness with recall after general anaesthesia in patients from a tertiary care hospital was 0.13%.