by Sarah Lane

A new study conducted by the Mayo Clinic finds a link between multiple surgeries by the age of four and a higher risk for developing learning disabilities in reading, written language, and mathematics. Recent research indicating that anesthesia given at a young age can kill brain cells prompted Dr. Robert Wilder, an anesthesiologist at the Rochester, Minnesota, hospital to scour the records of more than 5,000 children who had been patients at Mayo or other facilities in Olmsted County, home of Mayo. Approximately 600 of those patients had undergone one or more surgeries with general anesthesia, the kind that reaches the brain via the bloodstream and renders the patient unconscious.

Wilder discovered that those children who had had only one operation by the age of four were no more likely than the general population to develop a learning disability. But those who had had two surgeries incurred a 1.5 times greater risk. And those who had had three surgeries were at a 2.5 times greater risk. Of the patients who had had three or more surgeries, 50 percent later developed a learning disability.

One theory for the link is that the brains of children under the age of four are developing rapidly and so they experience greater cell death from the anesthesia. The hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in the acquisition of new learning, is affected by anesthesia.

Most of the patients in the study had had surgery for minor, common issues, such as ear tube removal. Others had undergone more serious surgeries. The sickest children were omitted from the study.

The researchers are still unsure about the nature of the anesthesia-learning disability link. More research will be required to confirm that it is the anesthesia and not some related issue that is causing the learning disability. In the meantime, however, the researchers urge parents not to avoid necessary surgical or diagnostic procedures. But if there are procedures that may safely be postponed until a later age, doctors may recommend waiting.

To read the complete study, published in Anesthesiology, the journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, follow this link. You can also read a related article, Update on Neonatal Anesthetic Neurotoxicity, by Piyush Patel and Lena Sun, in the same issue.

Might this study raise issues about performing spaying and neutering surgeries in young animals?

©2009 ProgressiveKid

Image by Aaron Escobar 2008, Creative Commons license.

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