Does general anesthesia affect children’s IQ and growth?

The most basic definition of general anesthesia for children is anesthetics which equal to sleep quality and pain relief. Sleep quality is very important for children’s surgical treatment, because children can’t bear the long-term passive position during operation and cooperate with surgical treatment. The inhibition level of anesthetics on nervous system is related to the concentration of drugs in blood night, and can be manipulated and adjusted. This kind of inhibition is completely reversible. When the drug is discharged from the body, the patient’s unconsciousness and various reflexes are slowly repaired, which is not harmful to the child’s IQ.

Some children are likely to have different levels of insomnia and short-term memory loss within one week after general anesthesia surgery due to trauma and phenomenon after surgery. Their parents mistakenly believe that the IQ loss is caused by anesthetics. In fact, the rehabilitation treatment of patients after surgery must take a certain period of time. This kind of transient cognitive function change is often repaired 3-7 days after surgery, which will not harm the child’s brain development.