I've noticed something a bit worrying about the way certain surgeries are performed, and I was wondering if there is a better way:
During surgery, medications are administered to induce unconsciousness, analgesia, amnesia and paralysis. Each of these has a role: unconsciousness as most people would be more than a little uncomfortable seeing their organs in living color, analgesia as the pain of being operated on can be quite significant, amnesia to prevent later trauma, and paralysis so the patient holds still.
I've noticed that while analgesia and paralysis can be independently controlled, anterograde amnesia tends to be more of a happy side effect of medications that induce unconsciousness and analgesia. This can be a problem with surgeries that require consciousness, such as many involving the brain or the spinal cord, or performed on pregnant women, as without severely impairing brain function there is no good way of inducing amnesia for the duration of the surgery. Hence it would seem a number of patients have traumatic memories of their brains being probed on the operating table.
In short, is there a way of inducing anterograde amnesia without the mental "fog" for trauma reduction in surgery?
