Is It Possible to Monitor the Depth of Anesthesia?

Awareness during anesthesia is revealed by explicit or implicit memory of intraoperative events. Although large clinical surveys indicate an incidence of explicit awareness of less than 0.3% during anesthesia for general surgery, the possibility of awareness is still a major concern, because patients may develop posttraumatic stress disorder by the experience of being awake during surgery [1]. Successful litigation against the anesthesia professional has been increasing in number as failure to provide adequate anesthesia can be considered a breach of the unwritten contract between patient and anesthetist [2].