Anesthesia and Autism: Ensuring a Safe and Comfortable Procedure at IRM
Anesthesia and Autism: Ensuring a Safe and Comfortable Procedure at IRM
For any parent, the thought of their child undergoing a medical procedure with anesthesia can be a source of significant anxiety. For a parent of a child with autism, this anxiety is often amplified. Questions like “Will they be scared?”, “Is it safe for them?”, and “What are the risks?” are completely normal and valid.
At the Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM), your child’s safety and comfort are our absolute highest priorities. We have designed our protocol specifically to minimize stress and maximize safety.
A key part of this is our approach to sedation. It’s important to start by clarifying one crucial point: we use light sedation, not deep general anesthesia.
Sedation vs. General Anesthesia: A Critical Difference
When most people hear “anesthesia,” they picture a patient in a deep unconscious state, intubated with a breathing tube, and managed by a large machine. This is general anesthesia, and it is not what we do for our standard autism protocol (including procedures like intrathecal administration).
Our approach is light sedation, which is fundamentally different:
- The Patient Breathes On Their Own: Your child is never intubated. They remain breathing comfortably and independently throughout the entire short procedure.
- The Goal is Calm, Not Unconsciousness: The purpose is to have the child in a calm, relaxed, and sleepy state. This ensures they feel no anxiety or discomfort and allows our medical team to perform the procedure safely and efficiently.
- Constant Monitoring: Your child is monitored every second by a specialist-led team.
This approach dramatically reduces the anesthesia autism risks associated with deeper, more invasive forms of general anesthesia.
How It Works: Gentle Sevoflurane Sedation
To achieve this calm, sleepy state, we use sevoflurane.
Sevoflurane sedation is one of the safest and most modern inhalation agents used today. It’s not an IV injection for sedation. It’s a gentle anesthetic gas that the child breathes in through a small, soft mask.
The Benefits of Sevoflurane:
- Fast and Gentle: It works very quickly. Your child simply breathes the odorless gas and gently drifts off to sleep in a matter of moments, often without even realizing it.
- Smooth Wake-Up: Just as quickly as it works, it also wears off. As soon as the gas is stopped, the child begins to wake up naturally and smoothly, often with little to no “hangover” effect.
The Most Important Safety Rule: 5-Hour Fasting
Our entire sedation autism safety protocol relies on one simple but non-negotiable rule: your child must fast for 5 hours before the procedure.
This means absolutely no food or drink (including water, juice, or milk) for at least 5 hours.
Why is this so critical?
When a person is sedated, their body’s natural reflexes (like swallowing) are relaxed. If the stomach has food or liquid in it, there is a risk it could come back up and be inhaled into the lungs. This is called aspiration, and it is a serious medical emergency.
An empty stomach is a safe stomach. This 5-hour fasting rule is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your child’s procedure is completely safe.
Our Commitment to You
We understand that this is a stressful part of the process for parents. That’s why we’ve chosen the safest, gentlest, and most effective method available. By using light sevoflurane sedation, ensuring the patient breathes on their own, and adhering strictly to the fasting rule, we create a calm, controlled, and stress-free environment for everyone.