General anesthesia may leave surgical patients with memory and cognitive deficits for days or weeks after an operation. But new research, involving mice, shows certain medications can reverse the negative effects of anesthesia drugs on memory.
For the study, published in the
Journal of Clinical Investigation, scientists from the University of Toronto gave mice a common anesthetic, and found the drug caused memory impairments that lasted up to a week. But when they gave the mice another drug, after the anesthetic, the memory effects were reversed, the
LiveScience Website reports.
The memory-preserving drug given to the mice is an experimental medication that is not yet available to human patients. While such a drug may be years away from being used in humans, such medication shows promise for minimizing the cognitive effects of anesthesia, said Beverly Orser, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Toronto.
She added that, in the meantime, doctors should tell their patients that anesthesia may affect their memory.
"It's assumed that once the drugs are eliminated, our memories are going to go back to normal," Dr. Orser told LiveScience. "But when we test patients before and after a surgical procedure, a large number exhibit deficits in memory performance."
© 2025 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.