Consciousness and Awareness Under Anesthesia

About the talk

Dr. Peter Gajecki, who has attended the last several meetings, is an anesthesiologist practicing in Vancouver. Last year I read a provocative article in the Atlantic entitled ‘Awakening,’ about patients who were in varying states of consciousness during operations, and the BIS monitor, an instrument widely used in North American hospitals to measure whether patients were unconscious. There is substantial evidence indicating that some patients are conscious during operations, and much doubt surrounding the BIS monitor… including the ethics of some of the experiments used to determine if patients were indeed partly or fully conscious during operations.

Peter's outline for the evening: an introduction and summary of the Atlantic article; an explanation of BIS in general terms; a definition and description of anesthesia; a discussion of consciousness from a physiologic, scientific and philosophic perspective; a deeper look at how the BIS monitor was developed, how it works and the evidence behind it; and questions and discussion.