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Anesthesia Before Age 4 Has Only a Minor Effect on Academics Later

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the breathe-deeply-and-count-backwards-from-100 dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-anesthesia-idUSKBN1322D3

Kids who are exposed to surgical anesthesia before age four tend to have slightly lower school grades at age 16 compared to other kids, but the difference is very small and shouldn't discourage parents from proceeding with necessary surgeries, researchers say.

The "low overall difference in academic performance after childhood exposure to surgery is reassuring," they write in JAMA Pediatrics.

Studying the health and school records of more than 2 million children born in Sweden between 1973 and 1993, the researchers identified 33,000 children who had one surgery with anesthesia before age four and 159,000 children who were similar in most ways but had not had surgery or anesthesia before age 16.

On average, kids who'd had anesthesia had 0.41 percent lower school grades at age 16 and 0.97 percent lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores at age 18.

Association of Anesthesia and Surgery During Childhood With Long-term Academic Performance (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.3470) (DX)

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:11PM (#424191)

    People who go to the doctor for every little thing are more likely to have children that score lower on IQ tests.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:10PM (#424219)

    Speaking of alternative, I believe that traumatic experience of undergoing an operation without anesthesia would be much more detrimental for such small kids (or anyone, for that matter)!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:35PM (#424233)

      Nice thinking. Actually I still won't eat some foods because I got really sick after eating a bunch (coincidentally) when I was about that age.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:41PM (#424257)

    doctors are very smart and emit a high IQ field which can and does induce high IQ in their immediate vicinity.
    it drops off, however, with square root of distance : )