Anesthesia and the brain

Will anesthesia affect my child’s brain development?

Our understanding of the answer to this question has grown over the past several decades and continues to grow. The best data seems to establish that exposure to general anesthesia early in life does not harm your child’s brain development.

For those interested in further detail, consider the following three high-quality studies that address this issue:

• GAS Study: This was an international randomized blinded clinical study published initially in 2016 and then again in 2019 (with further results). It compared infants having hernia repair under general anesthesia with infants having the same procedure under spinal anesthesia. (Spinal anesthesia is the use of a local anesthetic in the spine to block feeling, much like a dentist uses local anesthesia to block feeling in the mouth.) Researchers assessed the children’s subsequent cognitive development at 2-years of age and then again at 5-years of age. No differences were found in the cognitive development between the children having general anesthesia versus spinal anesthesia.
• PANDA Study: The PANDA study published in 2016 looked at sibling pairs. In each pair, one child had general anesthesia before the age of 36-months, and one did not. The researchers followed and tested each of the sibling pairs’ learning and cognitive abilities. No differences were found in the brain development between young children having anesthesia and those who did not. (The use of sibling matched pairs in this study helps to eliminate factors that might otherwise affect cognitive scores–factors such as genetics, parenting, and environmental factors.)
• MASK Study: This study released in 2018 involved 997 children in three groups–those who had never been exposed to anesthesia, those exposed once, and those exposed multiple times. All the children completed IQ and cognitive testing. No differenced in IQ and cognitive testing scores were found among the three groups.

Given the above, as a parent of young children myself, I personally would not hesitate to have my child receive dental anesthesia if needed. More on that here.