General anesthesia is a type of anesthesia that is often required for surgery. This type of anesthesia allows the patient to be completely unconscious and sensory for a certain period of time, and to undergo the surgical treatment without pain. In young children, surgery requires intelligence and mental development. In order to discuss this issue, let’s first talk about what intelligence and intellectual development are. Intelligence refers to a person’s ability to observe, memorize, think, and imagine. Some people view intelligence as the ability to select the best solution from among many possible solutions, i.e., the ability of the brain to receive, store, and process external information, and to extract and utilize information from the “memory bank” to solve problems. Intellectual development is affected by a variety of factors, among which genetic factors are the prerequisites for intellectual development, the brain is the material basis for intellectual development, and the environment and education are the decisive conditions for intellectual development. Children must be under the long-term, integrated rather than short-term, independent factors of these factors in order to get different degrees of intellectual development, either fast or slow. 1, the role of anesthetics is to block pain conduction In the process of surgery, anesthesiologists should be based on the needs of the operation, and constantly receive additional anesthetics for those undergoing surgery. When the surgery is over, the anesthesia will be discontinued. General anesthesia works by blocking the transmission of pain to the brain, temporarily suppressing the child’s consciousness. During surgery, the anesthesia machine can display various vital indicators and closely monitor the blood supply to the brain, heart, kidneys, and other important organs, and the anesthesiologist will correct any discrepancies found. In addition, anesthesia is a reversible process, with the discontinuation of anesthesia drugs, anesthesia drugs will gradually metabolize and disappear, the child will slowly wake up. Therefore, unless the anesthesia accident, general anesthesia will not have adverse effects on the child’s intellectual development. 2, the side effects of general anesthesia is temporary Within a week after the operation, the patient may have varying degrees of insomnia and short-term memory impairment. Thus, some parents attribute these changes after the child’s surgery to anesthesia-induced intellectual decline. In fact, a child’s surgery is a process of experiencing trauma and recovery takes some time, which does not mean that the child’s intellectual development has been affected. Thousands of children in China every year because of the need for surgical treatment and receive general anesthesia, some also experience multiple times, but there is no information showing that general anesthesia on the child’s intelligence will have a negative impact. Moreover, intelligence is not like height and weight can be measured accurately, even the most perfect intelligence test also has limitations. Therefore, parents should not attribute the general anesthesia used during surgery to their child’s unsatisfactory performance in a particular intelligence test or examination. Of course, if severe cerebral hypoxia and brain damage occur during anesthesia, it does result in mental retardation or even vegetative state. Fortunately, the incidence of such anesthetic accidents is extremely low. In conclusion, anesthesia is an important part of modern medicine, and the vast majority of surgeries cannot be performed without it. Usually, anesthesia is very safe, general anesthesia will not affect the intellectual development of the child, parents should be correctly aware of this and understand, cooperate with the doctor for the smooth operation of the child.