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Film Premiere invite for University of Leicester professor investigating anaesthetic awareness

A University of Leicester professor is invited to attend the UK premiere of a new Hollywood film –Awake (release date April 4)- dealing with the nightmare of anaesthetic awareness.

Professor Michael Wang, of the School of Psychology, is also due to address an international conference on the subject where a patient undergoing medical treatment is under anaesthesia but is conscious of all the pain of the operation.

Awake, starring Haden Christenson and Jessica Alba is a psychological thriller about the horrifying phenomenon where a patient's failed anaesthesia leaves him fully conscious but paralysed.

Professor Wang has spent more than 20 years working with patients who have woken up during operations. He believes part of the problem is that anaesthetists themselves do not realise just how common anaesthetic awareness is, or how difficult it is for them to detect it when it happens.

Research shows that between one and three in every 1,000 patients experience some form of wakefulness during operations.

Professor Wang said episodes of full awareness with explicit recall during operations with general anaesthesia are more common than many realise. He added:

"The common reason for failure to identify intra-operative awareness is the paralyzing effects of muscle relaxants. Contrary to traditional belief there are no reliable clinical signs to enable the identification of wakefulness."

Some may not remember an period of consciousness during an operation – anaesthetic drugs can interfere with recall – but they may still suffer subsequent psychological difficulties. In some cases patients aren't given enough of the sedative element of an anaesthetic to keep them asleep. 

Professor Wang will speak at a conference on anaesthetic awareness in Munich next month, arguing more should be done to prevent patients waking during operations.

He urges anaesthetists to use the Isolated Forearm Technique in which a tourniquet is applied to the arm before paralyzing muscle relaxant is administered, allowing patients to communicate with doctors should they become wakeful. He said: "In most cases if a patient becomes wakeful, no one knows about it until after the operation is over. The effects of these experiences can be devastating. People suffer depression, intense anxiety and other psychological problems." The problem is more common among women, although it is not known why.

Studies conducted by Prof Wang and Dr Ian Russell (Hull Royal Infirmary) have made use of the isolated forearm technique to determine levels of consciousness during general anaesthesia, which allows communication despite the muscle paralysis.

"Often patients will demonstrate high levels of consciousness during an operation but without conscious recall afterwards. This is because many anaesthetic drugs interfere with memory. I and colleagues have also investigated benzodiazepine sedation as another clinical circumstance in which there may be dissociation between unconscious and conscious recall. There is an intriguing literature in which patients have developed psychological disturbance following operations with general anaesthesia in which the patient has no conscious recall, but the nature of the disturbance is indicative of inadequate anaesthesia. Experimental studies that attempt to investigate the mechanisms by which this may occur are reviewed."

You can find out more about the movie at:
http://www.awakethemovie.com/

ENDS

Press release issued 27 March 2008.

Biography

Prof Wang was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire. After attending Rowlinson School he went to Manchester University for both undergraduate and postgraduate clinical training in the late 1970s. He then spent eight years working as an NHS Clinical Psychologist at Withington Hospital initially treating patients with substance misuse followed by work with general and acute psychiatric patients. During this time he completed a part-time PhD which investigated the aetiology of phobias in alcohol-dependent patients. In 1988 he was appointed Clinical Co-Director and Honorary NHS Consultant on the integrated Clinical Psychology Course at the University of Hull. In 1997 he became Head of Department, and then in 2000 was made Honorary Clinical Professor in the Postgraduate Medical Institute, University of Hull. He was awarded the Fellowship of the British Psychological Society in 1999 in recognition of his research into psychological aspects of anaesthesia and his contributions to clinical psychology training.

Prof Wang has a commitment to his profession as well as to training, and in 2001 began a three-year stint in the Chair role of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society. He is a registered clinical psychologist, neuropsychologist, health psychologist and cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist.

Prof Wang was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychology, Head of Clinical Section and Course Director at the University in May 2005.

Research Topic

Prof Wang has a longstanding research interest in psychological aspects of anaesthesia and in particular, the problem of anaesthetic awareness, which he is pursuing in Leicester alongside colleagues in the Academic Department of Anaesthesia, in addition to his work as Director of the Postgraduate Clinical Psychology Training Course.