Wow:

Every year an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 of the 21 million patients who receive general anesthesia wake up during surgery because they are under-anesthetized, usually by mistake or because doctors fear too high a dose of anesthesia could be dangerous. Half of them, like Williams, can hear or feel what is going on but are unable to communicate what is happening to them because they have been temporarily paralyzed. Nearly 30 percent feel pain, studies have shown.

Yikes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2004 at 5:28 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.