What do people expect of general anaesthesia?

<span class="paragraphSection">It is universally acknowledged that the public expect general anaesthesia to be an unconscious state.<a href="#aex040-B1" class="reflinks">^1–4</a> While apparently self-evident, knowing whether different conscious states under anaesthesia are acceptable is important for clarification of the research agenda in anaesthesia, that is appropriately focused on patient-centred outcomes. Furthermore understanding patient expectations may be a key way to improve patient satisfaction with anaesthesia. The great success of anaesthesia is validated through low rates of explicit recall of intraoperative events, however it remains unclear whether the public think amnesia of intraoperative events is a sufficient endpoint for anaesthesia. It is unclear whether dreaming (“disconnected consciousness from the environment”) or connected consciousness (“consciousness of external stimuli”) are acceptable outcomes under general anaesthesia. These questions are made more pertinent by our recent report that 4.6% of patients undergoing intubation under general anaesthesia respond on the isolated forearm technique, implying they have connected consciousness,<a href="#aex040-B5" class="reflinks">⁵</a> with 1.9% reporting connected consciousness with pain. To provide some initial insight into public opinion on this, we conducted a survey posted on our website (<a href="http://ift.tt/2qhMQnw">http://ift.tt/2qSHFHI;), social media (Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook) and distributed electronically. We explored the public’s views of states such as disconnected consciousness or dreaming during anaesthesia and intraoperative consciousness with and without amnesia.</span>

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