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From the Department of Anesthesia, Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Address correspondence to: Dr. Frances Chung, Department of Anesthesia, EC2-046, Toronto Western Hospital, University Health Network, 399 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario M5T 2S8, Canada. Phone: 416-603-5118; Fax: 416-603-6494; E-mail: frances.chung{at}uhn.on.ca
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Abstract |
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Methods: After Research Ethics Board approval, 258 patients undergoing general anesthesia (GA) and 250 patients scheduled for local anesthesia (LA) were recruited from our ambulatory surgical unit. Following the method of Tzabar, Asbury and Millar, patients were asked to complete the cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) before their procedure (with respect to the previous three days) and on the third postoperative day (with respect to their recovery period).
Results: General anesthesia and LA groups were similar in demographic make-up, except that the LA group contained more patients of American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status I (64.5% vs 52.7%, P < 0.05) and had significantly shorter procedure duration (25 vs 51 min, P < 0.01) than the GA group. Median preoperative CFQ scores (interquartile range) were 26 (18) for the LA group and 26 (18) for the GA group. Postoperative CFQ scores were 25 (20) for the LA group and 28 (22) for the GA group. There was no significant difference in preoperative CFQ score between groups (Mann-Whitney U). When preoperative and postoperative CFQ scores were compared, the small increase seen in the GA group was statistically significant (P < 0.05, Wilcoxon).
Conclusion: A statistically significant impairment of cognitive function in the three days following GA, but not LA was found. However, the magnitude of this impairment was small, and is of doubtful clinical significance. Modern ambulatory anesthesia may cause less delayed cognitive impairment than was previously thought.
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Introduction |
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The cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) is a subjective test designed to investigate failures of perception, memory and motor function.6 The questions refer to ‘real life’ situations and may provide more useful information about cognitive function than contrived psychomotor tests such as the Trieger dot test or digit recall. It is an established tool used to measure cognitive dysfunction, and has been well validated.7–10
In 1996, Tzabar, Asbury and Millar used the CFQ to investigate cognitive function after ambulatory anesthesia.11 They demonstrated a higher incidence of subjective cognitive failure in patients receiving GA compared to patients receiving local anesthesia (LA). However, results were based upon limited data from 54 subjects undergoing GA and 30 undergoing LA. A wide variety of surgical procedures were included, and the anesthetic technique was not standardized. We aimed to study subjective cognitive failures in day case patients using a larger sample size and modern anesthetic techniques.
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Methods |
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The general anesthetic technique was standardized. Anesthesia was induced with iv midazolam 1 to 2 mg, fentanyl 50 to 200 µg iv, and propofol 100 to 300 mg iv. Maintenance was achieved with desflurane or sevoflurane, with or without nitrous oxide. Patients receiving LA did not receive intraoperative sedation of any kind.
The CFQ consists of 25 questions regarding common lapses of cognitive function, including memory, perception and attention (Appendix, available as Additional Material at www.cja-jca.org). Each question is scored 0 to 4 depending on frequency of occurrence, as rated by the subject. High scores relate to increasing frequency of cognitive lapses. The overall CFQ score is calculated by the addition of all 25 questions, and thus has a maximum of 100.
The CFQ has been extensively used to assess cognitive failures in healthy individuals, in those suffering from mental or physical illness, and in patients recovering from the effects of anesthesia.6–11 The questions of the CFQ were originally designed to record cognitive lapses occurring during the previous six months. For the purposes of this study, patients were asked to consider only those lapses occurring during the previous three days. Patients were asked to complete the questionnaire before their procedures (with respect to the previous three days) and again on their third postoperative day (with respect to their recovery period). Postoperative questionnaires were returned to the hospital by mail.
Data were analyzed using SPSS 11.0. Demographic data were analyzed using the Chi-square test. Cognitive failure questionnaire score results were treated as non-parametric data. Intra-group comparisons were made using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Comparisons between groups were made using the Mann-Whitney U test. Sample size was calculated at 211 per group using a standard deviation of 11 units (from the work of Tzabar et al.),11 ß = 0.8 and P = 0.05. A difference of three units was considered clinically significant. A dropout rate of 20% was anticipated, giving a target of 253 per group.
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Results |
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Demographic data for those patients who failed to return full preoperative and postoperative questionnaire data are shown in Table II. These patients were excluded from the study. There were no significant differences between patients who did and did not return completed questionnaires in terms of gender, procedure length, ASA ratios or body mass index. In both GA and LA groups, the mean age was lower amongst those who did not return completed questionnaires. However, this difference only reached statistical significance in the LA group. Questionnaire results are shown in Table III.
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Preoperative and postoperative responses to individual questions were examined. Questions which generated significantly different preoperative and postoperative responses are shown in Table IV. Both LA and GA groups reported a significant increase in subjective cognitive failures in response to two items regarding memory lapses (questions 6 and 16). In the GA group, four other questions also demonstrated a significant increase in reported cognitive failures (Table IV). These questions related to lapses in attention (questions 7, 13 and 18) and memory (question 12).
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Discussion |
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The use of the CFQ to detect cognitive changes in the postoperative period was originally described by Tzabar, Asbury and Millar in 1996.10 Eighty-four patients were studied, undergoing day case surgery using a range of anesthetic techniques. An increase in cognitive failures of 3.4 points was noted after GA, but not LA. Although they were cautious attributing clinical significance to this result, it was put forward as evidence that the residual effects of anesthesia persist beyond 24 hr.
This study used identical methods but a much larger sample size. Our results suggest that deficits in cognitive function may be smaller than the original study concluded, and that such deficits may be of questionable clinical significance. It is not possible to conclude whether this apparent improvement is real (reflecting improvements in anesthetic technique) or simply a result of increased sample size.
Studies examining cognitive function after anesthesia in the 1980’s and 90’s appeared to show a significant impairment well into the first postoperative day.3–5 Patients thus were advised to avoid driving or other potentially dangerous activities for 24 hr after surgery. The anesthetic drugs and techniques used in these studies are no longer used for ambulatory anesthesia. An example of this would be the use of diazepam for premedication, thiopentone for induction and halothane for maintenance.4
New anesthetic drugs with recovery profiles more suited to ambulatory surgery have emerged. The early recovery profiles (e.g., 0–4 hr) of modern anesthetics such as sevoflurane, desflurane and propofol have been well studied and recently reviewed.1 Most psychometric tests appear to show a return to baseline values between four and six hours after anesthesia.12–14 However, Canet et al. demonstrated residual cognitive impairment in 3.5% of elderly ambulatory subjects (median age 67.6) at seven days after GA.15 It is difficult to conclusively attribute this impairment to GA, as there was no control group undergoing similar procedures under LA.
The advice currently given to patients regarding driving after ambulatory surgery does not appear to be evidence based. Sinclair et al. found no deficits in simulator driving skills at two, three or four hours postanesthesia in volunteers exposed to 30 min of desflurane.16 Edward and Chung studied driving simulator performance of patients following anesthesia for knee arthroscopy.17 Although both reaction time and electroencephalogram derived attention span were impaired at two hours, they had returned to baseline by 24 hr after anesthesia. Interestingly, despite impaired reaction time at two hours, patients maintained a more accurate road position at this stage of recovery than before their anesthetic. Further work is required before evidence based advice can be given to patients.
One of the limitations of this study is that it was not possible to randomize patients to receive either general or LA. The duration of procedures under GA was approximately twice as long as those performed under LA. It seems clear that the expected duration or complexity of the surgical procedure influenced the choice of anesthetic technique. This could be a potential source of bias. For example, if the GA group contained an excess of patients who had long procedures, they may have required more postoperative opioid analgesia than the LA group. This in turn could have lead to an excess of cognitive failures, which would be incorrectly ascribed to the anesthetic technique. Despite the probable bias against the GA group of longer procedure durations and likely increased postoperative opioid consumption, evidence for cognitive impairment was slight. This reinforces our conclusion that in every day clinical practice, delayed cognitive function after ambulatory anesthesia is minimal.
In conclusion, our subjective measure of cognitive function demonstrates a modest impairment after modern ambulatory anesthesia. Our results do not agree entirely with those of an earlier study using the same methods. Further work is required before the effects of modern anesthetic agents on delayed cognitive function can be fully quantified.
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Acknowledgments |
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Footnotes |
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Accepted for publication November 29, 2004. Revision accepted July 7, 2005.
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References |
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2 Ogg TW, Fischer HB, Bethune DW, Collis JM. Day case anaesthesia and memory. Anaesthesia 1979; 34: 784–9.[Medline]
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5 Chung F, Seyone C, Dyck B, et al. Age-related cognitive recovery after general anesthesia. Anesth Analg 1990; 71: 217–24.
6 Broadbent DE, Cooper PF, FitzGerald P, Parkes KR. The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates. Br J Clin Psychol 1982; 21: 1–16.
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10 van Gorp WG, Satz P, Hinkin C, et. al. Metacognition in HIV-1 seropositive asymptomatic individuals: self-ratings versus objective neuropsychological performance. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 1991; 13: 812–9.[Medline]
11 Tzabar Y, Asbury AJ, Millar K. Cognitive failures after general anaesthesia for day-case surgery. Br J Anaesth 1996; 76: 194–7.
12 Chen X, Zhao M, White PF, et al. The recovery of cognitive function after general anesthesia in elderly patients: a comparison of desflurane and sevoflurane. Anesth Analg 2001; 93: 1489–94.
13 Pollard BJ, Bryan A, Bennett D, et al. Recovery after oral surgery with halothane, enflurane, isoflurane or propofol anaesthesia. Br J Anaesth 1994; 72: 559–66.
14 Sanou J, Goodall G, Capuron L, Bourdalle-Badie C, Maurette P. Cognitive sequelae of propofol anaesthesia. Neuroreport 1996; 7: 1130–2.[Medline]
15 Canet J, Raeder J, Rasmussen LS, et al. Cognitive dysfunction after minor surgery in the elderly. Acta Anaesthesiol Scand 2003; 47: 1204–10.[Medline]
16 Sinclair DR, Chung F, Smiley A. General anesthesia does not impair simulator driving skills in volunteers in the immediate recovery period – a pilot study. Can J Anesth 2003; 50: 238–45.
17 Edward R, Chung F, Kayumov L, Sinclair DR, Moller HJ, Shapiro CM. Driving impairment following ambulatory surgery. Can J Anesth 2004; 51:A71 (abstract).
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