It is the nature of children to play and to move. This is true, but children’s play is also often fun, bumped, sick and painful is always inevitable, occasionally encounter a surgery is not impossible. Children’s surgery, basically, will be general anesthesia surgery. When it comes to “general anesthesia”, the poopers’ worries come flooding in: “Will general anesthesia affect the child’s intelligence?” “Will the child use anesthesia will become stupid, stupid, affect learning and development?” Some parents may even refuse general anesthesia because of this. Can general anesthesia really make your child stupid? Let’s hear what the pediatrician has to say! The brain is deprived of blood and oxygen to affect intelligence First of all, let’s take a look at why children will become stupid? We all know that whether a person is smart or dumb is related to brain activity. Brain cells, as the basic material unit of thinking, must have sufficient oxygen and sugar and other nutritional elements for their activity, of which oxygen is the main determining factor. If there is a respiratory and circulatory disorder, it will cause the brain cells to lack oxygen, and when the brain cells stop supplying oxygen for 5~8 minutes, it will seriously affect the metabolism of brain cells and affect the brain function, and even cause irreversible consequences. (Editorial language: this is why the delivery, found that the fetal umbilical cord around the neck brain hypoxia will need to rush to cut the child out of the reason.) Therefore, theoretically, if there is no lack of blood and oxygen, it is impossible to have an effect on the child’s intelligence. A surgery, the anesthesiologist will keep an eye on N many indicators So, the topic comes to the matter of general anesthesia for the child’s surgery. It is important to understand that the completion of pediatric surgery requires a team effort. Not only does it take a pediatric surgeon, but also nurses and anesthesiologists in the operating room and post-operative care unit. Often people think of anesthesiologists as being responsible for administering anesthesia, but in fact, anesthesiologists do much more than that. Not only do they provide anesthesia, they also have the responsibility of escorting the operation. During surgery, anesthesiologists understand the basic vital indicators of patients (such as blood pressure, heartbeat, blood oxygen level, etc.) through their rich clinical experience and advanced monitoring instruments on the one hand, and comprehensively regulate the physiological indicators of patients through infusion, medication, oxygen, etc. to ensure the oxygen supply of patients during the whole operation period. It can be said that without these efforts of anesthesiologists, the safety of surgery would not be possible. Likewise, continuous postoperative monitoring is done to prevent various unexpected situations and to ensure the oxygen supply to the brain. With oxygen, is there any need to worry about your child’s brain becoming damaged and dumb? Not only is the anesthetic controlled, but the effect is reversible. Moms and dads may still be worried, even if the brain is not ischemic and oxygen deprived, but it is anesthetic after all, in case there is any drug component that causes damage to the brain? We may want to understand the role of anesthetics first! In general, pediatric general anesthesia can be divided into intravenous and inhalation according to the route of administration, that is, through intravenous injection or pulmonary inhalation of anesthetics, so that the drug through the blood circulation to the nerve center – the brain, by blocking the transmission of information between the nerves, to achieve the purpose of inhibiting the child’s consciousness, blocking the transmission of pain. Of course, this blockage is controlled and reversible. Controllability means that the anesthesiologist can precisely control the anesthetic drugs during the surgery to meet the requirements of the surgery and to ensure the life of the child. The latest computerized target control technology has been able to administer the drug down to the milligram unit, so that there is no overdose of drug that can damage the brain. Reversibility means that the anesthetics used in the clinic have undergone rigorous drug screening, as well as rigorous animal and human testing, and their effects on the child’s neurological activity are one-time. With the end of the surgery, the anesthetics are excreted from the body under the regulation of the anesthesiologist. The anesthetics inhaled through the lungs are excreted in a prototype form, while those injected intravenously are converted to harmless substances in the body and excreted in the urine. After the anesthetic is excreted, the child’s neurological function is restored and no negative effects on IQ are left. Why are some children “dumbed down” after surgery? Of course, in clinical practice, we often see “side effects” of anesthetic use in children, mainly in the form of delayed reactions during the postoperative recovery period. So parents get excited and nervous: “What’s going on? Has my child been numbed?” In fact, this post-operative side effect is due to the low metabolic rate and poor excretory function of children, coupled with the fact that some of the anesthetic drugs are stored in fat, muscle and other tissues during the operation, which will be “secondarily distributed” to the blood after the operation. At this time, the child’s blood will still have a certain amount of residual anesthetics, will appear indifferent expression, slow reaction and other “dumbing down” symptoms. This is the normal metabolic process of anesthetic drugs, individual children may have varying degrees of insomnia and short-term memory impairment a week after anesthesia, but this does not mean that the child’s intelligence is affected, parents do not need to worry about. Without anesthesia, the child may really become “stupid” For surgeons, it is by no means alarming that if pediatric surgery is not performed without anesthesia, it will increase the risk of surgery and even cause the “child to become stupid” as a result. First of all, the child is not mentally developed enough to understand the disease and cooperate with the surgery. Imagine how traumatic it is for a child to leave the arms of his parents and enter an unfamiliar operating room, and to endure severe pain. Some scholars have concluded that there is a long period of disturbed behavioral development and a significant endocrine disorder in the above mentioned pediatric patient after surgery, and even when he grows up to be an adult, this unpleasant experience exists in his subconscious causing psychological disorders. Secondly, without general anesthesia, it is impossible for the child to cooperate during the surgery, with the consequence that he keeps moving, which has a huge impact on the delicacy of the operation. Just imagine, the surgeon has to calm or even hold the sick child while operating, how can the operation be guaranteed to be completed successfully amidst the child’s cries and struggles? Even if parents are brave enough to expose their children to such challenges, surgeons are afraid to operate under such conditions. For children who need surgery, general anesthesia is very necessary. As long as the anesthesiologists master the characteristics of pediatric anesthesia, use the drugs accurately, observe carefully and handle correctly, they will be able to ensure the safety of the surgery and the postoperative period will not produce those adverse effects that are rumored in the society.