Children and Anesthesia

Baby on a bed
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Anesthesiologist Lewis Satloff, MD, practices anesthesiology as a staff member at McAllen Anesthesia Associates in Edinburg, Texas. In addition, he serves on staff at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance. Possessing more than three decades of medical experience, Lewis Satloff, MD, works in both pediatric and adult anesthesiology.

In medicine, and particularly anesthesia, the cardinal rule is that children are not simply small adults. This is largely due to the huge range of variability in children. Children encompass a wide range of sizes and shapes, from preemies to teenagers.

As a result of this variability, children have significant physiological and anatomical differences in systems, such as the cardiovascular system, the renal system, and the central nervous system. Children also have a larger tongue, narrower nasal passages, a higher larynx, and a proportionately larger head, compared to most adults. All these factors affect the way anesthesia is administered and how certain medications affect the patient.

Findings Show Early Anesthesia Has No Long-Term Effects

By Ben Mills - Own work, Public Domain, 

Since completing his medical degree at Brown University, Lewis Satloff, MD, has worked in hospitals and surgical centers in Texas, California, Florida, Arizona, and Colorado, and is also licensed in Maryland. As a pediatric anesthesiologist, Lewis Satloff, MD, stays informed on the latest research and findings in pediatric medicine.

In 2019, an international team of researchers investigating the neurodevelopment of children exposed to general anesthesia as infants published its findings in the Lancet. The study tracked more than 700 infants in 6 countries who were administered the anesthetic sevoflurane before 3 months of age.

When compared to children who only received regional anesthetics, the general anesthesia cohort did not exhibit more neurological or behavioral problems than the control group within 5 years. These findings echo the results of a 2015 study carried out by the same research team. After following 300 infants for 2 years, the researchers found no increased risk of developmental problems by the age of 2.